Overview

This is the shocking and inspirational memoir of a boy who survived the genocide against the Tutsi. When he was seven years old Hyppolite lost many members of his extended family and witnessed the murder of his beloved father. Born in a mud hut without shoes, water or power and often hungry, he struggled after the genocide to gain an education and to learn to forgive the killers. By the age of thirty he had graduated from university in Rwanda and worked as a journalist and radio presenter, a playwright and a theatre director. He raised enough money to travel to England and achieved a Masters Degree in Sociology from Bristol University. He started a Foundation for Peace in Rwanda and travelled to America to deliver a series of lectures at universities along the East Coast of America, including Harvard, using theatre to address issues of hatred and racism being transmitted from one generation to the next, looking from the perspective of a genocide survivor, who was also a sociologist and an artist, at how we influence people's attitudes to change. In 2019, Hyppolite became an international news item when he performed a hundred-day walk across 1,500 kilometres of Rwanda to mark the 25th anniversary of the genocide, inviting people to join him and to share their stories of peace and forgiveness.

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Reviews

I read the book from start to finish in one sitting. I could not put it down. It made me laugh and it made me cry. Hyppo is an extraordinary young man who has endured tremendous tragedy - and yet has found the will to forgive those who murdered his family. Goodness radiates from him - and he attracts kind and generous people like a magnet. Everyone who reads this book will be inspired with hope for the future - and will want to help others. Emma Sky OBE, Director, Yale World Fellows, Senior Fellow, Yale's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs A Boy Called Hyppo is a testament to resilience in the face of severe challenges. Hyppolite Ntigurirwa begins with his unforgettable experiences as a young boy forced to endure the unimaginable horrors of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and its immediate aftermath. He describes his journey from a state of destitute poverty in a post-genocide displacement camp to the club-like halls of European and American universities, as well as the inspiring combination of force-of-will and generosity of strangers that fuelled it. Finally, he recounts improbable and astonishing transformation from a state of vengeance and despair to his growth into an agent of compassion and reconciliation. He delivers it all with a sense of humor, wonderment, and humanity that is sure to be an inspiration to any who reads it. David Simon: Director of Genocide Studies Program. Director of Graduate Studies, African Studies Advisory Board member, Yale University In A Boy Called Hyppo Ntigurirwa undertakes a lucid, compelling and evocative journey into his past that will send shivers down your spine. That all trace of humanity vanished among the perpetrators of the genocide that targeted the Tutsi in Rwanda is indisputable. But it is also indisputable that the catastrophe that Ntigurirwa witnessed as a little boy did not destroy the strength of the human heart. With quiet elegance he shows with his example and in his encounters with others, how humanity triumphs over hate. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, author of A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness I have relayed this story to everyone I know - read it and meet a young leader who stands alongside Greta and Malala for courage, humanity and the ability to overcome tragedy and raise the human spirit. You will remember his name: Hyppolite. Kate Robertson, Co-founder of One Young World

Author Information

"Andrew Crofts is a ghostwriter and author who has published more than a hundred books, both fiction and non-fiction, a dozen of which were Sunday Times number one bestsellers. Andrew's name first became known among publishers for the stories he brought them by the otherwise disenfranchised. Travelling all over the world he worked with victims of enforced marriages in North Africa and the Middle East, sex workers in the Far East, orphans in war-torn areas like Croatia and dictatorships like Romania, victims of crimes and abused children everywhere. The success of these books brought many very different people to his door; first came the celebrities from the worlds of film, music, television and sport, and then the real elite in the form of world leaders in business and politics. Andrew has also published his own fiction, most recently ""What Lies Around Us"" and ""Secrets of the Italian Gardener"", which both draw on his experiences ghostwriting for the powerful and wealthy. His books on writing include ""Ghostwriting"", (A&C Black) and ""The Freelance Writer's Handbook"", (Piatkus), which has been reprinted eight times over twenty years and ""Confessions of a Ghostwriter"" (Friday Project)."

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