Excellent book. Everybody should read it

books:

	• Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst The Rwandan Holocaust Immaculee Ilibagiza Hay House, 2006 - 4 pages average customer review:based on 450 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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Great book, very inspiring. Delivery was very fast. Needed it so I could finish book in time to see the author speak at local university. Thanks.

Excellent book. Everybody should read it

I loved it...it helps you realize the absurdity of many of our worries.
It helps your faith grow and be thankful. Good
also for teenagers.

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The inner strength that can be ours

A close family member is heading off to Rwanda soon and I have been reading lots of horrifying books about the 1994 genocide of Hutus against Tutsis. Immaculee Ilibagiza's memoir, "Left to Tell" is another painful and frightening look at the genocide, told by one whose life was spared almost reluctantly by her Hutu pastor. Immaculee's story begins on the bucolic shores of Rwanda's beautiful Lake Kivu. Her father and mother are teachers and community leaders who have raised a loving family in a modest home. When the genocide approaches, the family and many of their Tutsi neighbors are caught flatfooted and unawares. Soon they are engulfed in a swirl of ethnic hatred and madness that is unimaginable. Immaculee finds her way to her pastor's home and is hidden, along with several other women and girls, in a tiny bathroom. For several months, they remaining in their unlikely sanctuary, while drug-crazed killers roam the countryside and ransack the house looking for Tutsi "cockroaches" to slaughter.

In her torment and isolation, Immaculee finds refuge in her Catholic faith and in constant prayer. A modern-day St. Anthony, she is tempted toward hatred, revenge and doubt by voices she attributes to the devil. Saved by God, she believes, when hundreds of thousands of her countrymen have been systematically murdered, she clings to faith, hope and forgiveness.

"Left to Tell" is a beautiful story of faith in the face of incomprehensible evil. It seems to have become a soothing balm to Western readers who share Immaculee's faith, if not her heroism and inner strength. I find this a bit problematic, since it was the abandonment of the Tutsis by we Western powers that allowed the genocide to continue. One can honestly ask whether a little more backbone on the part of the "civilized" world would have counted as much as Immaculee's many prayers or personal deliverance. As such, her book serves as a misdirected balm to our guilty consciences.

But given the other choices at our disposal when faced with mindless human horror -- madness, bitterness, despair, grief and vengeance -- Immaculee's choice of hope and forgiveness seems not only sane, but exemplary. "Left to Tell" is a testament to the strength that faith, applied appropriately, brings to the human spirit, enabling it to survive hatred and betrayal, even unto death.

Includes many pictures of Immaculee's family and friends, before and after the genocide.

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Must read!

This book changed my view of the world. I could not put it down until I finished reading it. It is a very strong book and I highly recommend it. I bought some copies for relatives and friends.

Read This Book!

Left to Tell is a wrenching book which shows so clearly the two sides of humankind--the harshest cruelty and barbarism imaginable on the one side, and the profoundest capacity to love and forgive on the other. It is a book charged with spiritual meaning which can open you up to finding the divinity within yourself.

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