IT WOULD take a far better writer than me to put into words just how good this book is.

Because A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali surpasses anything I have read before and am sure I will read in the future.

Set amid the horrifying torture and genocide of the Rwandan massacre of 1994, this book focuses on the experiences of a Canadian journalist.

He is used to living in the African nation and in the days before the murders begin, falls in love with a local beauty.

The book, which is based on true events, follows them and their friends through the unremitting horror of the next few weeks, where more than a million Rwandans were killed.

The massacre has become a hugely popular subject for books - and now films with Hotel Rwanda and Shooting Dogs popular at the box office. Yet this beats them all, because this book is not just for history and politics geeks like me. It's about everyday people living through extraordinary, unimaginable events.

The story is at times incredibly shocking and appalling - it deals with the worst of human nature and the saddest of circumstances. And there is little to raise a smile. But this tells us to enjoy every day because you never knows what's around the corner.

Maybe not a book for the holidays and the beach, but definitely a novel not to be missed.