Jacaranda - Gaël Faye

Eleven-year-old Milan, an only child, is terribly bored in a France where echoes of distant tragedies reach him only in fragments, on television in the evenings. Then, suddenly, at the end of the summer of 1994, his mother imposes the presence of a supposed cousin his own age, Claude. Initially bewildered by this mute and wounded boy, newly arrived from Rwanda, Milan finds in him an almost brotherly figure with whom to share everything: his room and his suburban neighborhood, finally less dreary, his games and passions, his laughter and his sorrows…

But this double, who had become so close to him, is torn away as abruptly as he had appeared. Milan was only alone; now he is consumed by grief, outraged by his parents' silence. He doesn't know it yet, but step by step, journey after journey, becoming a young man and then an adult, he will trace his way back to the source of the family mystery and the origins of the Rwandan tragedy, still rebuilding after the genocide against the Tutsis. There, he finds a family: his taciturn grandmother; Eusebia, generous and determined; Claude, ever the dreamer, living in a cheerful caravanserai with his friend Sartre; little Stella, often taking refuge high in the jacaranda tree, her beloved pet tree; and so many others trying to make their way in a wounded country, yet one of phenomenal vitality.