This study examines the mystery of Burundi"s ethnic massacres, among the bloodiest in the world. They occurred in 1959, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1969, 1972 and 1988. In the 1988 massacre, people picked up their machetes, their axes, and stones and started slaughtering their neighbours. Based on solid scholarship, and written by a man who was there as a wire-service correspondent, this book examines the mystery of the ethnic massacres - tribal in nature - in this small, central African republic.