The author is a journalist and war correspondent based in Paris. He interviewed the killers for this book in 2000. He left journalism to work full-time researching and writing about the genocide. He first went to Rwanda in 1994, shortly after the genocide ended, and recorded the survivors’ stories. He wrote Machete Season in part because his readers wanted to understanding the genocide from the perspective of the killers. He has written many books on war and covered major events, including in the Middle East and in the former Yugoslavia.

Adalbert is the de facto leader of the killers. He was also an interahamwe leader for Kibungo. As the head of a death squad, he accepted more responsibility than the others for the killings, although only in court. He maintained that he was only responsible for killing, not the planning of the genocide. Before and after the genocide, he is characterized as intelligent yet cruel. At the same time, he is religious; he was at choir practice the Saturday before the genocide starts.