An ordinary man : an autobiography / Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner.

"As his country was being torn apart by violence during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina refused to succumb to the madness that surrounded him. Confronting killers with a combination of diplomacy, flattery, and deception, he risked his life every day to offer shelter in Kigali's Hotel Mille Collines to more than twelve hundred Tutsis and Hutu moderates, while homicidal mobs raged outside." "In An Ordinary Man, Rusesabagina tells the story of his life for the first time. As the son of a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother, he describes what it was like to grow up on a small farm in a country continually plagued by racial and political unrest. We learn of his extraordinary career path, which led him to become the first Rwandan general manger of a Belgian-owned luxury hotel - the Mille Collines - where he formed important relationships with some of the most powerful men in his country. Rusesabagina takes us inside the hotel for those terrible one hundred days in April 1994, an experience that became the inspiration for the film Hotel Rwanda. He gives a vivid account of the anguish that he and his family and friends suffered as they watched their loved ones hacked to pieces, and of the betrayal they felt as a result of the international community's refusal to help. Finally, he explains how he and his family, unable to remain in Rwanda when the crisis was over, eventually settled in Belgium and began rebuilding their lives."--BOOK JACKET.