The invisible traces

What visible and invisible traces remain after a genocide, and does the imprint on the soul persist to the next generation? How do you handle a silence, ghosts, and everything you have fled?

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse came to France as a teenager in 1994, after surviving the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda, when almost a million people were murdered. After several years of humanitarian work, she made her literary debut with the prize-winning short-story collections Ejo (2015) and Lézardes (2017) and produced the poetry collection Après le progrès (2019). Ejo means both yesterday and tomorrow, and life before and after 1994 is a recurrent theme in her work. She published the book Tous tes enfants dispersés in 2021.

Mairesse talks with Kristin Skare Orgeret, professor of journalism at Oslo Metropolitan University. Their conversation will be in French, with simultaneous translation by Christina Mediaas.