"AN ORDINARY MAN: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY," by Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner, Viking, 207 pages, $23.95.

Reading the autobiography "An Ordinary Man" is a lot like seeing the movie "Hotel Rwanda," a compliment to the filmmakers, as both the book and the film demonstrate that Paul Rusesabagina was no ordinary man.

As manager of Kilgali's Milles Collines Hotel, Rusesabagina was comfortable with all types of people and never hesitated to cultivate friendships, all of which served him well when the 100 days of genocide began in his home country of Rwanda in 1994.

In order to save the lives of 1,200 people whom he packed into the Belgian luxury hotel he managed, Rusesabagina used both flattery and diplomacy to get people for whom he had little respect to help him. Often referred to as "the Oskar Schindler of Africa," Rusesabagina came close to losing his life many times — and he almost lost his family once before the calamitous events ran their course.

But he always retained a sense of right and wrong and the importance of human life — and like the hero of "Schindler's List," he was a lonely man in the midst of chaos and tragedy.

As an autobiography, this book is far from perfect — it rambles in many places, especially in the pages detailing his early life. And the process of working with a ghost writer, Tom Zoellner, often detracts from Rusesabagina's real personality.

The writing is serviceable but it would most certainly have been a better book if Rusesabagina had just written it himself. Instead, he sat down and talked with Zoellner, telling him his story, then left Zoellner to the job. Rusesabagina's command of English is limited, so it might have been better if he had written it in his own language, then hired a translator.

That said, this story is both painful and inspiring. Rusesabagina proved he is a most unusual man with genuine courage, who early on determined he would save whatever lives he could from those who were being mindlessly snuffed out around him.

Although genocide might never be truly understood by the average person, the hotel manager goes a long way to explain the chilling reality in Rwanda, where the issue was racial — between the Tutsis and the Hutus. As a Hutu, he was, theoretically, safe from the machetes. But his wife was Tutsi, so she was vulnerable.

From the beginning of the genocide, Rusesabagina believed he would die. But like many others, he feared being hacked into pieces — a fear shared by all of those who were suddenly in danger of execution by machete at the hands of their former friends and neighbors.

Although this is a difficult book to read from an emotional point of view, it seems necessary for us to recognize the signs of genocide and the importance of acting quickly. The United States and the United Nations have still failed to act in Darfur, Sudan — where another genocide is in progress.

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E-mail: dennis@desnews.com