The Overwhelming

As a middle-aged American academic who desperately needs to publish a book in order to gain tenure, Jack Exley leaps at the chance to go to Rwanda to write about his old college classmate Dr. Joseph Gasana, who has in the intervening years has specialized in treating children stricken by AIDS. But when Jack, along with his African-American second wife, Linda, and his disaffected teenage son, Geoffrey, arrive in Kigali in the fall of 1994, they are not only unable to find Joseph, they are unable to find anyone who will even admit to having known the Tutsi doctor. Befriended by both a cynical American diplomat and a perhaps too-helpful Hutu political powerbroker, Jack and his family slowly, then urgently, become enmeshed in the tension and terror, the professional risks and personal betrayals, that they ultimately realize mark the start of a genocidal war--a horror that they can sense but cannot comprehend or control.

In The Overwhelming, J.T. Rogers has written a play that is both a brilliantly crafted piece of writing and a tense, suspenseful exploration of one of the great human tragedies of our time. It will have its U.S. premiere off-Broadway in November 2007.

Author: J. T. Rogers
Publisher: Farrar Strauss & Giroux-3pl
Published: 10/02/2007
Pages: 137
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780865479746

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/15/2008 pg. 101

About the Author

J. T. Rogers is the author of several plays, including Madagascar, which received two awards for best play. He received a NEA/TCG Theatre Residency in 2004 and has been a guest artist or lecturer at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the University of Utah, and Truman State University in Missouri. He lives in Brooklyn.

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