The Convoy: Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse in Cambridge with Prof Charles Forsdick

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse; Charles Forsdick, Drapers Professor of French
• Wednesday 05 March 2025, 17:00-18:00
• Cripps Seminar 5, Magdalene College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Jay Richardson.

On 27 February 2025, Open Borders Press will publish The Convoy by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, translated by Ruth Diver. The author will be in Cambridge to discuss The Convoy with Charles Forsdick, Drapers Professor of French.

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was fifteen at the height of the genocide inflicted on the Tutsi people in Rwanda. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were killed in a period of only three months. The lives of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse and her mother were a sleepless nightmare—until a place was eventually found for them on a convoy to safety.

More than a decade later, after rebuilding her life in France, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was ready to begin the process of reconstructing her incomplete memories of the escape and establishing community with other survivors. She is now a poet and a prize-winning novelist, but not before this has she written about her own history. Beginning by making contact with the B.B.C. team which filmed the convoy, then by tracking down aid workers, journalists and fellow escapees and scouring archives in a search for photographs of her crossing of the border, the author pieces together records and personal accounts to try to comprehend the chaos that overtook Rwanda at the time of the genocide.

Winner of the Grand Prix de l’Héroïne Madame Figaro, the Prix Montluc Résistance et Liberté (special jury prize), the Prix France Télévisions and the Prix du Roman Métis des Lecteurs.

This talk is part of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cripps Seminar 5, Magdalene College
• Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.