The jacaranda is a purple tree that symbolizes rebirth and hope. But it also hides a story of silence and pain in its shadow.

Milan, who grew up in Versailles, returns to Rwanda to unravel the secret of her mother’s silence. Stella searches for her own story in the leafy shade of her faithful childhood “friend,” the jacaranda. Rosalie, the matriarch of the family, reminds her: “You can’t know who you are if you don’t know where you come from.”

This poetic novel stands like a centuries-old tree on the border between darkness and light. It reminds us that humanity is contradictory: capable of both cruelty and love, but its essence, despite everything, is to live. Gael Fay presents the history of a century of Rwanda and the tragedy of the genocide of the Tutsi through the fate of 4 generations.