I have recently been recommended to read Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron. A simple plot sysnopsis might be : a coming-of-age story of a young boy hoping to become the first medal winner for his country in a track event.However, the story takes on a different hue when you find out that Jean is a young Tutsi boy, living & training amidst mounting tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, trying to make sense of the world around him.
My friend knew that I had read We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed without families : stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch, and we'd talked at length about the genocide in Rwanda, so she thought that I might interested in this fictional story set in Rwanda as well.
As I placed my hold for Running the Rift, I noticed the words "Winner, Bellwether Prize for Fiction, 2010". I was intrigued, what is the Bellwether Prize for Fiction?
Turns out this prize was set up by author Barbara Kingsolver, in support of Literature for Social Change. I'm looking forward to this book arriving on my holds shelf, to see what it means to be the winner of an award for "social change".
