An immensely powerful, cathartic denunciation of poverty, ignorance, global apathy and media blindness. Kigali is both a poignant love story and a stirring hymn to humanity - an essential read for anyone interested in exceptional literature of lasting value. The swimming pool of the Mille-Collines hotel is a magnet for a privileged group of Kigali residents: aid-workers, Rwandan bourgeoisie, soldiers and assorted expatriates. Prostitutes and birds abound too. Among these patrons is the waitress Gentille, a beautiful Hutu often mistaken for a Tutsi, long admired by Valcourt, a Canadian journalist and film-maker. As the two test the water with a love affair, civil unrest in Rwanda makes insidious, inevitable progress.

Courtemanche is a French-Canadian journalist and film-maker specialising in Third-World politics and the impact of AIDS upon Africa. Set in Rwanda in 1994, his novel is an attempt to portray and come to terms with both the terrible social fault-lines which led to the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus - and with the plague-like spread of a disease, AIDS, which recognizes no social or political boundaries. Courte-manche's main protagonist is a white documentary film-maker who falls in love with a young Tutsi woman. This relationship becomes the vehicle for the author's impressive intertwining of the personal and the political. It's a nightmarish, uncompromising and disturbing read, underpinned by an imperative to tell things as they were (and are), however hideous, but also to seek for some redeeming human quality. A very powerful debut, ably translated from the French by Patricia Claxton.

GIL COURTEMANCHE is an author and journalist in international and third-world politics. His recent non-fiction works are Quebec (1998) and Nouvelles douces coleres (1999). Un dimanche a la piscine a Kigali (2001) is his first novel. He also made an award-winning film called 'The Gospel of AIDS'.