Small Country

Small Country (French: Petit pays) is a novel set in Burundi by the Franco-Rwandan rapper, songwriter and novelist, Gaël Faye.

[1][2] Set in Burundi and Rwanda from 1993 onwards, the novel is narrated by ten-year-old Gaby, who lives with his French father and Rwandan mother in an impasse in a comfortable district of Bujumbura.

Gabriel's sheltered upbringing leaves him oblivious to the increasing tensions between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority (to which he, through his mother, belongs).

As neighbouring Rwanda faces the outbreak of civil war and genocide, which spill over into Burundi, the innocence of Gaby and his group of friends is brutally shattered.

It also received favourable reviews in translation, and was longlisted for the 2019 Aspen Words Literary Prize and the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Non-Fiction.