Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

A brave, unforgettable first-hand account of the Rwandan genocide by a man almost literally haunted by the dead and by the spectre of his mission’s failure. Marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of this horrific event, this edition includes a new note from Roméo Dallaire.

Serving in Rwanda in 1993, LGen. Roméo Dallaire and his small peacekeeping force found themselves abandoned by the UN in a vortex of civil war and genocide. With meagre resources to stem the killing, General Dallaire was witness to the murder of 800,000 Rwandans in a hundred days, and returned home broken, disillusioned and suicidal. Shake Hands with the Devil is his return to Rwanda: a searing book that is both an eyewitness account of the failure of humanity to stop the genocide, and the story of General Dallaire’s own struggle to find a measure of peace, reconciliation and hope.