Machete Season (French: Une saison de machettes) is a book by Jean Hatzfeld published in 2003 by Éditions du Seuil.

Hatzfeld first spoke with survivors, whose story he wrote in Le nu de la vie, and then looked at how the killers experienced the same event, partly as a result of requests from readers.

It comprises a group of ten people, most of them farmers, who lived in the hills around the town of Nyamata and were already close friends before the killing started.

In the spring of 1994, they became the relentless executioners of their neighbours, including friends, members of their soccer team and people with whom they sang at Sunday mass.

The author groups their testimonies by theme and includes also precise comments triggered by their words plus other general considerations and historical summaries.

The killings were accompanied by plunder: they harvested money, beer, bananas to make alcohol, equipment, corrugated metal (to cover their houses and enclosures) and cows (usually bred by the Tutsi).

The anti-Tutsi sentiment that had dominated Rwanda for 30 years now compounded with radio propaganda and Interahamwe activism prepared the Hutu to accept the idea of extermination.

[2] In the Washington Post, Alison Des Forges considered the book “limited in scope and marred by numerous errors” but, added, “its grassroots view of the genocide enriches and completes other, more formal, accounts.” [3] Publishers Weekly wrote that "Steering clear of politics, this important book succeeds in offering the reader some grasp of how such unspeakable acts unfolded.

"[4] Lee Ann Fujii of Georgetown University described the book as "a valuable window—albeit one that has been keenly shaped by the author—on the transformation of one group of men, from one region of the country, from ordinary peasants into genocidaires.