As a child Jean Patrick does not know to which of the two main Rwandan ethnic groups, Hutu or Tutsi, he belongs. But despite liberal efforts to play down ethnic differences, the vicious rift in Rwandan society opens up beneath his feet, even as he is discovering a world-class talent for sprinting. The differences between the groups can seem to resemble those of Swift's Big-Endians and Little-Endians  the Tutsis rearing cattle where the Hutus traditionally farm crops, the Tutsis distinguishable by their narrow noses and felt hats. But when wearing a felt hat can bring a machete down on your skull, the space for satire closes up. Jean Patrick, a Tutsi, needs a Hutu identity card to get through roadblocks; but as an Olympic hopeful, he is paraded to western aid-givers by the Tutsi-hating president as proof of reforms. His simple desire to run faster is overwhelmed by murderous politics. This touching story gets under the skin of Rwandan society, but the genocide of the 1990s was so terrible it seems scarcely possible to contain it within the pages of a novel.