Bad News

In a dictatorship it wasn’t the facts that determined one’s life, it was the claims, the whispers, feelings.

Hearing a grenade blast in the city of Kigali, journalist Anjan Sundaram headed towards the sound. When he arrived, however, traffic circulated as normal, there was no debris, and the policeman on duty denied anything had happened. There had been a cover-up, a cloaking of the discontent in Rwanda and a silencing of the media.

Bad News is the heart-racing account of the battle for free speech in modern-day Rwanda. Following not only journalists who stayed, despite fearing torture or even death from a ruthless government, but also those in exile, it is a story of newspapers being shut down, of the power of surveillance, terror and corruption, and of great courage.

Sundaram tells the true narrative of Rwandan society today, and of the fight to make explosions heard.