Dying to Live : A Rwandan Family's Five-Year Flight Across the Congo

Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga was teaching history in Kigali, Rwanda, when he was forced to flee to the neighboring Congo with his wife and three children. Thus began a harrowing five-year voyage of survival during which they travelled thousands of miles on foot from one refugee camp to another. Lacking food and water, they were often robbed, sometimes raped, and constantly pursued and bombed by shadowy armed soldiers with sophisticated weapons and aerial surveillance information. This brilliant and touching book is the story of one family among the more than 300,000 refugees—many of whom did not survive. For those wishing to understand the war in the Congo, this must-read will restore the humanity and the right to mourn for hundreds of thousands of Rwandans dispersed throughout the world.

Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga is a former history professor at the Lycée de Kigali, Rwanda. He and his family were forced to flee the country in 1994. Casey Roberts is an award-winning translator and editor. He is the recipient of the John Glassco Prize awarded by the Canadian Literary Translators Association for his translation of the YA novel Break Away 1, Jessie on My Mind. They live in Montreal. Phil Taylor hosts the Taylor Report at CIUT, Toronto. For ten years he was investigator for human rights lawyers including former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the late Charles Roach.