"'This was a country of corpses and orphans and terrible absences. This was where the spirit withered.' So begins Fergal Keane's powerful account of the Rwandan genocide, in which more than a million people have been killed. Keane's book is a memoir of what he calls a terrible voyage: a deeply personal account of an encounter with evil." "He tells the story of a journey in which he and his BBC colleagues tracked down one of the most notorious mass murderers of the conflict and escaped massacre by Hutu extremists. He examines how tens of thousands of ordinary Hutus were mobilized by their political leaders to massacre members of the Tutsi minority, as well as moderate Hutu politicians. Keane rejects the widely held perception that Rwanda's slaughter was the simple consequence of tribal antagonisms. Instead he blames unscrupulous politicians for fomenting ethnic rivalry and planning a systematic campaign of genocide. Season of Blood is a harrowing story told by a reporter who travelled into the heart of the horror. 'It changed everybody. The survivors most of all of course. But also the doctors, the aid workers, the priests, the journalists. We had learned something about the soul of man which would leave us with nightmares long into the future.'" "This is not a comfortable book. It will shock and disturb. But it is a necessary book, telling a story that must be told."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved