Gaile Parkin
Baking cakes in Kigali
€ 11.50
At the heart of this African novel is Angel Tungaraza, a Tanzanian woman who has recently moved to Rwanda with her husband Pius and their five orphaned grandchildren. Menopausal and putting on weight, she is an enthusiastic baker of delicious, brightly-iced cakes, which she sells to friends and neighbours. But Baking Cakes in Kigali is not simply a warm story of family life and friendship. For it is set six years after Rwanda's genocide of 1994 – "those hundred days while violence was tearing this country to pieces like a chicken on a plate". The novel is divided into 14 sections, each of which hinges on a special occasion for which Angel bakes a cake. But over each celebration, full of promise for the future, hangs the shadow of the terrible past. A wedding cake celebrates the union of the shopkeeper Leocadie, whose mother has been imprisoned as a génocidaire, with the security guard Modeste, whose whole family were slaughtered. Their marriage is a concrete example of Rwanda's official policy of reconciliation. "There is no more this or that now," observes Angel's hairdresser with satisfaction. "Now we are all Banyarwanda. Rwandans."

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