Rwandan literature

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (April 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,595 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Littérature du Rwanda]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Littérature du Rwanda}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Rwandan literature is literature both oral and written in Kinyarwanda, or French, particularly by citizens of Rwanda.

Rwanda's literary history is largely an oral one. The traditional texts were classed in two main categories: more formal, royal documents, which are described as 'official tradition', and the non-formal, popular literature. The distinction between these categories is based on whether or not the literature was controlled officially, rather than denoting any sort of value judgment regarding the content.

To this day, storytelling and public speaking are much admired, and good storytellers are respected in society.

Very little literature has been written in Kinyarwanda (the native language of the country), but there are a number of books written in French. The clergyman and historian Alexis Kagame (1912–81) researched the oral history of Rwanda and published a number of volumes of poetry and Rwandan mythology. Saverio Naigiziki wrote an autobiography, Escapade rwandaise (Rwandan Adventure) and a novel, L'Optimiste (The Optimist), about the marriage of a Hutu man and a Tutsi woman.

In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, Benjamin Sehene (b.1959) wrote Le Piège ethnique (The Ethnic Trap) (1999), a study of what led to the genocide. He also wrote 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.

• Alexis Kagame
• Scholastique Mukasonga
• Saverio Naigiki
• Benjamin Sehene

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2015)

• Our Lady of the Nile

• Culture of Rwanda
• Music of Rwanda