KIBOGO, translated by Mark Polizzotti

155pp., paperback, London, 2023

First published in France in 2020 as Kibogo set monté au ciel. First published in English in the USA in 2022.

When a rogue priest is defrocked for fusing the gospels with the martyrdom of Kibogo, a fierce clash ensues between ancient Rwandan beliefs and the missionaries determined to replace them with European Christianity.

"Official dogma is no match for the mercurial power of storytelling in Rwandan-French writer Scholastique Mukasonga's sly new novel Kibogo ... Mischievous and satirical . . . The stories themselves are furtively retold and altered and added to across time, subsuming even their tellers as they demonstrate a life force and lifespan that mere mortals can't compete with." Wall Street Journal

"Priests and village elders, small boys and wise women, saviors both earthly and heavenly, local chiefs and anthropologists populate this slim volume, drawing the reader into a world that is distant in both time and space, a world that is well worth visiting." Chicago Review of Books

Scholastique Mukasonga was born in Rwanda in 1956. In 1960 her family was displaced to the Bugesera district of Rwanda. A Tutsi, she was later forced to flee to Burundi and settled in France in 1992. Her books, in English translation, include the memoir Cockroaches; What the Hills Whisper, a collection of short stories, and the novels Our Lady of the Nile, Pounding Heart and Heart and The Barefoot Woman, a tribute to her mother.