Small Country

An international sensation (sold in thirty territories to date), this debut from a French-Rwandan ex-investment banker turned hip hop artist is a beautiful but harrowing coming-of-age tale

an excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

[A] luminous debut novel… This is a book that demanded to be written... With a light touch, Faye dramatises the terrible nostalgia of having lost not only a childhood but also a whole world to war

An evocative portrait of what it means to lose one’s freedom and innocence. Gaël Faye’s literary powers lie in his unbridled honesty and his effortless prose. He is a writer of great promise and grace

Unforgettable… Gaël Faye’s talent is breathtaking; no country that can give the world a writer like him should ever be called small

Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers

as beautiful as it is painful... It's easy to see why it set the French literary scene alight. This is one you won't be abandoning in the hotel library when you leave.

a masterpiece in bringing home the first-hand realities of war... It's heart-wrenching and beautiful and distressingly authentic. Everyone should read it.

This beautiful coming-of-age novel conveys a heart-rending desire for peace and harmony. It sets forth a vision of the world that is poetic rather than political, where horror is displaced by wonder.

A magnificent book… a master-stroke of a first novel

Precise and potent...deeply affecting... The juxtaposition of everyday growing pains and the fallout from atrocities is heightened by Faye's lovely prose, which builds a heartrending portrait of the end of childhood

Gaël Faye’s words are a mix of such precision, gentleness and gravitas that finishing this first novel feels like coming out of a heartrending embrace.

A very personal and intimate novel about an African childhood cut through by socio-political turbulence… Gaël Faye has evoked the darkest pages of contemporary Africa without tipping into pathos

A literary revelation, subtle and powerful

Gael Faye is a revelation. Small Country is a luminous and poignant novel about childhood, war, exile and identity… this is literature at its most powerful

Writing that is beautiful, sad and funny. A poetic ‘cry to the world’ about the existence of Gabriel, his family, his friends and everyone else. Before they became “a bunch of exiles, refugees, immigrants and migrants"

In the summer months, there are two categories of books: those we take on holiday and leave behind in the sand, and those that make their mark on us for life. Small Country by Gaël Faye is firmly part of the latter category.

The dizzying enterprise of a childhood reclaimed… [Gaël Faye] has understood how to put words on this earth that cannot be summed up by a mass grave

Gaël Faye makes us smile, despite the seriousness of his words

What is autobiographical, and what imagined? In the end it doesn’t matter, when he Gaël Faye gives life to the lost land of his childhood, with poetry and modesty

Small Country is a stirring and graceful tale of stolen innocence and fragmented identity. Hopeful, raw and deeply human, it is a modern classic in the making.

An excellent novel, a model of restraint and quiet literary sophistication

An international sensation, Small Country is a beautiful but harrowing tale of coming-of-age in the face of civil war. 
 
'A luminous debut novel…Faye dramatises the terrible nostalgia of having lost not only a childhood but also a whole world to war' Guardian 
 
Burundi, 1992. For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expat neighbourhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister, Ana, is something close to paradise. These are happy, carefree days spent with his friends sneaking cigarettes and stealing mangoes, swimming in the lake and riding bikes in the streets they have turned into their kingdom. But dark clouds are gathering over this small country, and soon their peaceful idyll will shatter when Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda are brutally hit by war. 
 
‘Unforgettable… Gaël Faye’s talent is breathtaking’ Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers

Gaël Faye

Sarah Ardizzone

'There is magic in Gaël Faye’s writing. A luminous poetic quality that sheds light on History without tempering it—probing, with supreme clarity, the secrets of a country and a family. Through the beauty of his style, he speaks humanely and compassionately about the worst atrocities. This book is unforgettable.'

‘A work of rare, poetic and haunting qualities, on memory, identity and justice, and the humanity that horror might beget. Memorable and utterly, captivatingly brilliant.’

'A novel about time and its effects, about what it does to people, to memory, to places. . . .Above all a novel that speaks out against silence.'

'A deeply felt exploration of memory, inheritance, and the possibility that something 
beautiful can emerge from the worst type of atrocity . . . populate[d] with vivid 
and morally complex characters.'

'[A] multibranched vérité-fiction . . . Jacaranda’s architexture fills in the gaping 
memories with the buried truths that imperil trusted friendships, vindicate familial 
intimations, and appease consciences.'

'A novel of painful beauty, whose gentleness of tone only serves to underscore the 
horror of the genocide and the difficulties of its aftermath.”'

'An extraordinary life force emanates from these pages.'

A young man journeys from Paris to Rwanda to discover the truth about his mother’s past and the country of her birth, from bestselling and prize-winning Rwandan-French novelist and hip-hop artist Gaël Faye 
 
‘A luminous poetic quality … unforgettable’ Leïla Slimani 
‘Utterly, captivatingly brilliant’ Philippe Sands 
 
Milan – the twelve-year-old son of a French father and a Rwandan mother – blames flunking his exams on the emotional trauma of the genocide in his mother’s homeland. It’s a convenient excuse: growing up outside Paris in the 1990s, the violence is an abstraction that only reaches him through distant television broadcasts. 
 
That is, until Milan’s mother introduces him to Claude, a young cousin with a bandaged head who has come to France seeking medical treatment. Thrilled to have a new playmate, Milan treats Claude as a brother until one day, he is sent back to Rwanda as quickly as he came. 
 
Four years later, Milan travels for the first time to Rwanda, encountering a beguiling country and family members he never knew existed, and reuniting with Claude. But the trip raises more questions than it answers – about Milan's family history, the war and its aftershocks. 
 
Over the course of many years, Milan returns to Rwanda again and again, compelled to confront the past and imagine a new kind of future. Jacaranda is a deeply felt portrait of a man seeking to understand his family and his nation. 
 
‘A writer of great promise and grace’ Chigozie Obioma 
‘Gaël Faye’s talent is breathtaking’ Imbolo Mbue

Gaël Faye

Praise for Jacaranda

'There is magic in Gaël Faye’s writing. A luminous poetic quality that sheds light on History without tempering it—probing, with supreme clarity, the secrets of a country and a family. Through the beauty of h ...

‘A work of rare, poetic and haunting qualities, on memory, identity and justice, and the humanity that horror might beget. Memorable and utterly, captivatingly brilliant.’

'A novel about time and its effects, about what it does to people, to memory, to places. . . .Above all a novel that speaks out against silence.'

'There is magic in Gaël Faye’s writing. A luminous poetic quality that sheds light on History without tempering it—probing, with supreme clarity, the secrets of a country and a family. Through the beauty of h ...

‘A work of rare, poetic and haunting qualities, on memory, identity and justice, and the humanity that horror might beget. Memorable and utterly, captivatingly brilliant.’

'A novel about time and its effects, about what it does to people, to memory, to places. . . .Above all a novel that speaks out against silence.'

'There is magic in Gaël Faye’s writing. A luminous poetic quality that sheds light on History without tempering it—probing, with supreme clarity, the secrets of a country and a family. Through the beauty of h ...

‘A work of rare, poetic and haunting qualities, on memory, identity and justice, and the humanity that horror might beget. Memorable and utterly, captivatingly brilliant.’

'A novel about time and its effects, about what it does to people, to memory, to places. . . .Above all a novel that speaks out against silence.'

Books by Gaël Faye

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