Name Benjamin Sehene Role Author | Education University of Paris | |
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Benjamin Sehene (born 1959) is a Rwandan author whose work primarily focuses on questions of identity and the events surrounding the Rwandan genocide. He has spent much of life in Canada and lives in France.
Sehene was born in Kigali to a Tutsi family. His family fled Rwanda in 1963 for Uganda, and he studied in Paris at the Sorbonne in the early 1980s, before emigrating to Canada in 1984. He currently lives in Paris. He is a member of International PEN.
In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, Sehene returned to Rwanda, hoping to better understand what had happened. He subsequently wrote Le Piège ethnique (The Ethnic Trap) (1999), a study of ethnic polemics, and Le Feu sous la soutane (Fire under the Cassock) (2005), an historical novel focusing on the true story of a Hutu Catholic priest, Father Stanislas, who offered protection to Tutsi refugees in his church before sexually exploiting the women and participating in massacres. Sehene also contributes articles to the online newspaper rue89.