Ruanda, April 1994; in Kigali the mob runs riot. David, who works for the Swiss foreign aid, has let the last plane sent to evacuate foreigners leave without him. For a hundred days he hides in his house. His gardener provides him with food and with information about Agathe, the daughter of a ministry official who is his reason for staying here. He thinks about the past four years, years spent loving Agathe and working as a VSO worker in Kigali. Millions have been invested in a totalitarian regime that organised genocide when a rebel army threatened to seize power. Even David became an accomplice to the slaughterers, and when the rebels take over Kigali he flees over the border with the mass murderers. There he finds Agathe again in a refugee camp, but she is no longer the woman he once loved.
Lukas Bärfuss` meticulously researched novel tells the story of people who set out to do good and finally caused nothing but evil. `A Hundred Days` relays the darkest chapter of Africa`s history, a story which concerns us more than we wish to believe. Not least, it is the moving story of love in times of war and the devastation caused by hate.
The Author
Lukas Bärfuss, born in Thun, Switzerland in 1971, is one of the most successful dramatists to emerge in recent years, and his plays are staged all over the world. Bärfuss was voted playwright of the year in the critic poll featured by the magazine `Theater heute` in 2005. Amongst many other awards, he has also won the Mühlheim Dramatist Prize. He lives with his wife and two children in Zurich.
Published by Wallstein
Meienberg`s Death - The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents - The Bus. Plays. (2005); Alice goes to Switzerland - The Test - Amygdala. Plays. (2007)
English extract:
English extract Hundred Days 
