The War You Don’t Hate by Blaise Ndala

Reviewed by Ian Thomas Shaw

With The War You Don’t Hate, Congolese-Canadian writer Blaise Ndala cements his reputation as one of the most compelling new voices in Canadian and African diaspora literature. Originally published in French as Sans capote ni Kalachnikov in 2017, this blistering novel—now available in English thanks to fellow novelist Dimitri Nasrallah’s translation—takes readers deep into the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s endless war and the global hypocrisies that feed on it.

The novel weaves together the fates of three central characters: Véronique Quesnel, a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose Oscar-winning film Sona: Rape and Terror in the Heart of Darkness thrusts her into the international limelight, and two former child soldiers, Red Ant and Baby Che, whose lives were shaped by the very violence her film claims to expose. Véronique’s success in Hollywood becomes both a beacon and a target—the distant glimmer of fame conceals, and perhaps perpetuates, the very suffering it claims to illuminate.

Red Ant and Baby Che, having survived the brutality of the Second Congo War—the deadliest conflict since World War II—are on a mission of vengeance. Their obsession with Véronique Quesnel is rooted not only in the personal, but in a much deeper indictment of the global systems that commercialize human suffering. In their journey, they cross paths with other unforgettable characters: Sona, the fourteen-year-old girl whose ordeal becomes Véronique’s ticket to stardom; Miguel, the Basque doctor and genuine humanitarian whose quiet integrity contrasts sharply with the performative benevolence of “ego-charity”; and Rex Mobeti, a Congolese football star turned philanthropist, whose return from Europe blurs the line between redemption and vanity.

Ndala writes with a biting clarity, blending adolescent rawness with literary sophistication. His prose channels the disillusionment of the postcolonial subject while capturing the internal contradictions of those caught between war and the illusory promises of peace, between being seen and being consumed. The novel is not simply an exposé of violence; it is a metafictional reckoning with complicity.

The War You Don’t Hate has garnered numerous accolades, including the 2019 Combat national des livres on Radio-Canada and nominations for the Trillium Book Award and the Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire. It is not difficult to see why. This is a novel that challenges not only how we read, but why we read. Ndala forces us to question our role as spectators—whether we are moved by stories of suffering or merely titillated by them.

Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ndala left his country in 2003, first for Belgium—where he studied human rights law—and then for Canada, where he now lives and works as a lawyer in Ottawa. His literary career began with J’irai danser sur la tombe de Senghor (2014), a biting satire of post-independence African elites. That novel won the Ottawa Book Award and was optioned for film. His third novel, Dans le ventre du Congo (2021), has also been translated into English, further establishing him as a key literary voice navigating the terrain between Africa and the West.

The War You Don’t Hate is at once a revenge tale, a postcolonial satire, and a deeply human meditation on memory, power, and complicity. Blaise Ndala has not only written a gripping novel; he has set a moral trap, and we, the readers, must decide whether we have the courage to spring it.

The War You Don’t Hate is published by Véhicule Press.