311pp., paperback, Reprint, Cambridge, (2019) 2020
"Aidan Russell has written a powerful and disturbing study of how struggles over power and a government’s claim to monopolise truth led to the ethnicisation of politics and to violence in a newly independent country.' Frederick Cooper, New York University
"This book reveals the power and potential of national history as Russell puts language at the center of African politics. Violence and truth, speech and borders, lies and citizenship constitute the history of Burundi after 1962, and they remain in constant tension with every memory and speech about the postcolony." Luise White, Professor Emerita, University of Florida
Aidan Russell is Associate Professor of International History at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He is the editor of Truth, Silence and Violence in Emerging States: Histories of the unspoken (2018).