Law, Literature and Genocide: Rupert Bazambanza’s Smile Through the Tears

Proceeding from the view that international criminal law remains a neglected area of study within law-and-literature scholarship, this article undertakes a critical reading of Rupert Bazambanza’s 2004 graphic novel Smile Through the Tears, set during the Rwandan genocide. It argues that Bazambanza’s text not only provides a powerful rendering of the subjective experience of the victims of genocide, but also reveals to the reader a number of the conditioning factors that catalysed the violence. Reading the novel alongside case law and academic literature, the article ventures an analysis of how, by exposing such factors, the text might also aid in furthering awareness and understanding of core issues relating to the legal framework of genocide.