I am moved and deeply comforted to learn that Cockroaches, translated by Jordan Stump from my first book, Inyenzi ou les Cafards, has interested you enough for a place among the finalists for the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose.
I am particularly touched because Cockroaches is the book that brought me to literature. Cockroaches is the paper grave for my dead, for all the people of Nyamata who will never be given a proper burial. I wanted my writing to rescue them from the anonymity of the mass graves. Thus, the last paragraph of Cockroaches is simply a list of their names. As I wrote it, I thought of the wall of the Shoah Memorial in Paris.
With all my gratitude, Scholastique Mukasonga