Scholastique Mukasonga was born in Rwanda in 1956. She settled in France in 1992, only two years before the brutal genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda. Her groundbreaking books include: the debut novel Our Lady of the Nile, Cockroaches, Igifu, and National Book Award-nominated The Barefoot Woman, expertly translated by Jordan Stump. In 2021, she won the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom.
Mark Polizzotti has translated more than sixty books from the French. His translations have won the English PEN Award and have been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the International Booker Prize, and the NBCC/Gregg Barrios Prize, among others. The author of twelve books, his essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Bookforum, and elsewhere.
