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    An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
    Unavailable
    An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
    Unavailable
    An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
    Audiobook7 hours

    An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography

    Written by Paul Rusesabagina and Tom Zoellner

    Narrated by Dominic Hoffman

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A remarkable account of the amazing life story of the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda 

    Readers who were moved and horrified by Hotel Rwanda will respond even more intensely to Paul Rusesabagina's unforgettable autobiography. As Rwanda was thrown into chaos during the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, turned the luxurious Hotel Milles Collines into a refuge for more than 1,200 Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees, while fending off their would-be killers with a combination of diplomacy and deception. In An Ordinary Man, he tells the story of his childhood, retraces his accidental path to heroism, revisits the 100 days in which he was the only thing standing between his "guests" and a hideous death, and recounts his subsequent life as a refugee and activist.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 6, 2006
    ISBN9780786555024
    Unavailable
    An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography

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    Reviews for An Ordinary Man

    4.5/5

    149 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      He may have been an ordinary man before being placed in an extraordinary situation. But he responded with extraordinary actions. He is no longer an ordinary man in my view. He's a living saint if there ever was one.This is a story about the right man with the right abilities at a bad place at a horrible time. It is unlikely that any other person could have accomplished what he did at that time and place. He had the right combination of social intelligence and ability to read the personalities of others to save the lives of 1,268 people. In the process of doing this he had to bargain with obviously evil people who he didn't like or respect. But he had the self control to maintain a friendly face and the endurance to flatter and manipulate as needed. There were obviously many times during the 76 days when everyone in the hotel would have been killed but for his well timed actions. The book is Paul Rusesabagina's memoir of his life. The book begins with him describing his youth and family he was born in. He then describes Rwanda's history. Then he follows his life as a young man and describes how he ended up being a hotel manager. This background offers an insight into why and how the Rwandan genocide occurred. But of course genocide can never make sense, but at least the book's history explains the events leading up to it.This book gives me hope that good people can be found almost anywhere. Toward the end of the book he describes numerous brave cases where shelter was provided for the targets of the killers. Unfortunately, there are never enough good people when they're needed. It's interesting to note that Rwanda is the most heavily Christianized country in Africa. Some 90 percent of the people identify themselves as Christians. Yet all of this Christianity did not prevent neighbors hacking approximately 800,000 of their neighbors to death with machetees. This should place a touch of humility upon those of us who say that Christianity has a message of peace and justice. Paul Rusesabagina says in the book, "I felt that God left me on my own during the genocide. .... I share this yearning in my heart with other Rwandans, was God hiding from us during the killing?"
    • 5/5
      A moving memoir about the events leading up to and during the Rwandan genocide. This book leaves the reader with a better understanding of how something like this could have happened.
    • 3/5
      A good book about a horrendous subject. The true story was most gruesome but also inspirational to read of the tremendous courage and selfless sacrifice of an extradinary man. The genocide in Rwanda was a blot on the face of all the world that turned its back on this poor nation in extreme distress. Including the United States. What causes hundreds of thousands of seemingly normal people to turn to violence and murder? Lack of education, fear, poverty, hunger, misinformation, corrupt leadership, lack of morality?? We better find out and deal with it or this scenario could replay over and over again in Africa and elsewhere.
    • 4/5
      I have to admit to being an American who knew very little about how the Rwandan genocide had come about, and in fact about the real scope of it. I am considerably more educated after having read this book.If you've seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, you know the basic outline of how Paul Rusesabagina sheltered approximately 1,200 people in a hotel in Kigali. In the book, he tells how he did it - by calling in favors from people whose acquaintance he'd made as a hotel manager. That doesn't begin to describe how much he had to use his wits. He had to sit down and talk with people who were commanding others to hack their fellow citizens to death with machetes, and often doing it themselves as well. He had to face these men and find a way to whatever small measure of humanity might be inside them. Failing that, he had to figure out what sort of bribe might allow them to make a deal with him. It's inspiring what can be accomplished by simply doing what seems to need doing. Luck was involved, and perhaps some naivete on Rusesabagina's part, but it was a combination that worked miracles for his family and the refugees he housed in the Milles Collines Hotel.
    • 5/5
      First, listening to this book on audio was extremely powerful. So much so that I actually had to stop the CD, stop the car, then turn it back on to listen to because it was so moving and was making it hard for me to concentrate on driving. The author manages to use direct language to tell his amazing story of being the manager of a hotel in Rwanda during the genocide. He managed to turn the hotel into a refugee base and, amazingly, held off the militia and other killers for 76 days, saving the lives of more than 1000 people.The book provides an extremely harsh view of the world's failure, and particularly the failure of the United States and the United Nations, to intervene in the early days of the genocide to prevent the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The author also tells the story of both his negotiations with specific individuals and the story of what happened to others that he knew.I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Though the subject matter is disturbing, it's an important piece of world history.
    • 5/5
      Read this book after watching the movie HOTEL RWANDA. It fills in the gaps and give you a bit of behind the scenes information. Paul also highlights the importance of words. That is how he helped 1200+ people survive.
    • 5/5
      An incredible Autobiography written by the man who inspired the movie 'Hotel Rwanda'. Often sad, incredibly tragic, but also full of hope that even in the darkest of times, there are people that hold on to the basic human decency that tells them to protect their fellow human beings, not harm them. I found this book to be engrossing while simultaneously being horrifying. The author describes events during the genocide with an almost casual air at times, as though watching your neighbors hack your other neighbors apart with a machete is something you just become used to. But, there's also a undercurrent of terror there, as though even after almost becoming numb to it, it's still so terrible to remember that he tries not to. All of this is perfectly understandable. After all, it's the most basic of all human survival skills. You adjust to your situation in order to cope, and simply block out things that are too painful to remember or live with.The wisdom present in this book is profound. You can definitely take lessons about life from someone who survived one of the worst situations imaginable. Such as when he talks about his decision to stay behind during the partial evacuation of the hotel, even though he could have gotten out, because he knew there'd be nobody left to try to protect those staying behind, and he couldn't live with himself if they were harmed or killed because he cared more about himself. Or, when they come for a man that wasn't much liked because he had just recently been released from prison for beating someone to death, and who is high on the kill list for having three sons fighting with the Tutsi rebel army, and he basically says to him "Let me go out there. Let them kill me so all of you can live." Then the author writes 'There is no crime a man can commit that makes him deserving of death.' It is a type of everyday wisdom that I suppose can only really come when you live through the kind of horror that he did, which puts everything in perspective.Whether writing about the heroic or the horrible, the everyday or the extraordinary, perhaps the greatest thing about this book is that it's written with a great sense of humility. Paul Rusesabagina would tell you (and does, repeatedly) that he didn't do anything extraordinary. That all he and others like him did was remain human in an inhuman time, but the fact is that he doesn't truly realize how extraordinary that is. To go against the storm, to whisper 'no' when everyone else is screaming 'yes', takes a strength that is to be envied and respected. He is a hotel manager. He did his job, and he did it well. But, more than that, he's a hero, whether he realizes it or not. I don't know whether I'd have the strength to do what he did, but I can only hope that whenever a storm comes, there will always be people like him to help make sure that at least some survive it.
    • 5/5
      An exceptional memoir by a humanitarian hero and eyewitness to the Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, sheltered over 1,200 people and saved their lives. Nothing ordinary about him.
    • 5/5
      This is the memoir of Paul Ruseabagina, a hotel manager in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. With "a cooler of beer, a leather binder, and a hidden phone" he saved 1,268 people. This is the story of how he used those tools to schmooze and persuade and bribe and conjole to keep the killers from murdering those under his protection. He dealt with some odious people, but as he put it in his concluding chapter, "[e]xcept in extreme circumstances it very rarely pays to show hostility to the people in your orbit." He was able to save those people because he was willing and able to sit down with killers, ply them with cognac and not flinch. That leather binder was filled with high-level contacts he had made in years of treating VIP hotel guests graciously. He wrote that no one is completely good or evil, and what he looked for was not the good or evil side but rather the "soft" versus the "hard" side. Sometimes that meant appealing to self-interest, greed or vanity--not just moral qualms. His approach and outlook on people reminded me of a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that "the line separating good and evil passes... right through every human heart." Ruseabagina calls this memoir "an ordinary man" and in the introduction insists he's no hero.I beg to differ.Along the way the book examines the nature of genocide and what caused it to break out in Rwanda, what different infamous 20th century genocides share, and what could have prevented it. A lot went into the toxic cocktail. A legacy of European "divide and conquer" colonialism in Rwanda that ingrained and further stratified what were only (somewhat fluid) class divisions into racial divisions between the Tutsi and the Hutus. Preferential racial policies requiring racial registration and identification and which group was in favor swung back and forth between them depending on who was in power. One big contributor that surprised me was the poisonous role of talk radio that whipped up and organized the murderous hatred, calling Tutsi "cockroaches" and even giving out names and locations of people to murder. Those were some of the internal factors. Ruseabagina also points outward to world indifference--particularly blaming the United Nations and the United States. I have to admit to feeling ambivalent about that as an American. I don't believe we should be the world's 911--and we get in trouble when we try. But I can't imagine saying that to Rusabagina's face without flinching--800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered right in front of the eyes of the world in around three months. It's hard not to respond to his plea that we mean it when we say "never again" and do better in the future in preventing genocide than the ineffectual UN efforts that stood by as so many were slaughtered. And actually maybe that's part of why Ruseabagina called this book An Ordinary Man--because he wants to emphasize what he did was nothing extraordinary, nothing beyond the reach of an ordinary person--in other words, no we do not get off the hook. At the very least, the book makes you think--it's a gripping quick read and very informative.
    • 5/5
      My only sadness in doing this review is that I was limited to only 5 stars. This is an incredible book - a must read for anyone who likes to consider themselves educated even slightly in the political currents in the world.Rusesabigina lived through the horrendous genocide in Rwanda and in the process,used his hotel and managerial skills to save over 1200 people from slaughter. Mr. Rusesabingina is not a trained author, which I felt lent a more realistic tone to his memoirs and did not detract from it in the least. His recollections of the atrocities that occurred, as well as the life he lived in Rwanda prior to the genocide, left indelible impressions upon me,I would highly recommend this book to anyone.
    • 5/5
      As the Rwandan government, which was in the hands of the Hutu tribe, encouraged its Hutu citizens to systematically murder anyone of the Tutsi tribe or their helpers, Paul Rusesabagina, himself the son of a Tutsi mother and Hutu father, offered shelter from this terror to over 1,000 refugees. Mr. Rusesabagina had been working for the Belgian airline Sabena and managing its hotel in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. Using personal values from his father and his own hotel management and people skills, he was able to avert dismemberment and murder of all of the hotel residents at the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. This is a captivating story. In it, Rusesabagina indicates that he is no hero. He suggests that each person should be aware of conditions which might lead to a similar situation and take a strong stand, even if it means being the sole voice against a crowd. Some of Rusesabagina's ideas are repeated throughout his story, perhaps for emphasis. All of what he has to say is very important. He may have been an “ordinary” man in extraordinary times, but he did have the presence of mind to use his work experience and bargaining skills as a stabilizing factor to help himself and others survive this cruel time of terror.
    • 5/5
      In the mid 1800’s, a British explorer’s theory evolved into the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Africa. The first white man to see Lake Victoria, John Hanning Speke, claimed the two tribes in the Rwanda region were direct descendants from the Bible.Speke theorized the Tutsis were a lost Christian tribe from the Middle East. The Tutsis were a thin-nosed, tall race, who ate beef and drank milk. They immediately escaladed from poor tribe to royal subjects with this new knowledge.Their counterparts, the Hutus, were direct descendants of Noah’s son, Ham. As the Genesis story goes, Ham is forced into servitude for his sins against Noah. The Hutus, described as farmers, short and stocky in stature with wide noses, became overnight un-successes. They went from independent providers to dumb animals in need of a master.In reality, one could not tell a difference in the races, because one didn’t exist. Speke saw an opportunity to pontificate his claims and consequently weighed one group against the other. A person today would merely assume the cattle-owning Tutsis benefited from better nutrition.As the years progressed, the Tutsis became tyrant leaders. They believed themselves special and entitled to more of Rwanda’s resources. Since they owned the cows, they needed more land to support them. The Tutsis spread their claim; and an economic divide, as well as social, began to form.On April 6, 1994, a huge explosion rocked the capital city of Kigali, Rwanda. Tatiana called her husband in fear, begging him to return to their home. Her husband, Paul, was manager of the premier Rwandan Hotel Diplomate. Paul was also a Tutsi and his wife Tatiana a Hutu.As he rushed home he noticed civilians, even his neighbors and their children, sporting uniforms and machetes. The car radio exclaimed, “Do your work. Clean your neighborhood of brush. Cut all the tall trees.”An Ordinary Man is the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina and his experience in the 100-day revolt. A horrendous 850,000 Rwandans lost their lives. Paul, living in the very hotel used as Hutu headquarters, kept 1,268 Tutsis in the hotel alive through verbal reasoning. This incredible story is the basis for the 2004 movie, Hotel Rwanda.