Rights Information

North America: Graywolf Press

Arabic: Al Arabi

Dutch: Jurgen Maas

French: La Croisée/Grupe Delcourt

German: Orlanda

Italian: Francesco Brisochi

Turkish: Ilksatir

Marketing Information

SILENCE IS MY MOTHER TONGUE is selected by Flanders Literature for support with translation grants . Flanders Literature may also pay for travel costs incurred by authors travelling abroad to promote their translated works.

In September 2021 Sulaiman Addonia was interviewed for the prestigious German ZDF-TV book program of Matthias Hügle and he was invited to The Frankfurt Book Fair 2021 to present SILENCE IS MY MOTHER TONGUE.

Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, 2019

Finalist for Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction, 2021

Finalist for CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction, 2021

Reviews

New York Times Book Review “Elegant and descriptive…A riveting, mysterious, almost magical and delightfully chaotic depiction of the inner workings of an East African refugee camp…As this story of young, codependent refugees is propelled into a revelatory, formally experimental and ultimately tragic conclusion, the initial depth and beauty Jamal witnessed through his ‘cinema' curtains has only further blossomed. The novel leaves us with the lingering imprint of the siblings’ many sacrifices, and their ever-growing love.”

Publishers Weekly “Darkly poetic…[Sulaiman Addonia] maintains a strong voice with vibrant lyrical imagery.”

Guardian “The exchange of masculine and feminine roles within the context of a sexually conservative culture makes for a gripping and courageous narrative.”

Daily Mail “[A] richly written second novel, which brims with the sensory flavours of remembered experience.”

The Rumpus “Silence is My Mother Tongue dissects how a refugee camp erases one’s individuality, what communities demand of women, and how, in the face of great loss and scrutiny, one can find a way to redeem individuality by redefining love, sex and gender roles.”

The Brooklyn Rail “Jagged yet subtle…The structure keeps upending the ordinary. [Silence Is My Mother Tongue] reads like a picaresque in a nutshell, tightly confined yet full of reversals. Some are swift as a finger-snap, others unfold like a ballad…Addonia [has] asserted the humanity of people often cloaked in shadow.”

Ploughshares “Sulaiman Addonia’s Silence Is My Mother Tongue, perhaps in defiance of expectations, sings with the confidence of characters who believe that they are going to end up somewhere better, someday, even if they have to wade through the mire to get there.”

Anderson Tepper in World Literature Today “One of the most astounding books of this past year—which may have slipped your attention due to the pandemic—was Silence Is My Mother Tongue, the second novel by Ethiopian Eritrean writer Sulaiman Addonia. Published last September by Graywolf Press, the novel is just now beginning to get the recognition it deserves...Set in a refugee camp in Sudan, the novel defies expectations—shimmering with sensual detail, it charts the daily encounters and erotic dreams of an extraordinary cast of characters, with the inseparable siblings Saba and her mute brother, Hagos, at its center.”

Martha Anne Toll in Triangle House essay Sibling Transgressions and the Surrender of Language: Sulaiman Addonia and Aahron Appelfeld “The very best authors strengthen our humanity by giving voice to experience that defies imagining. Addonia and Appelfeld test their characters’ humanity by placing them in extreme conditions. The four siblings rise above unending suffering to practice love, no matter that it may be transgressive love. Each writer has a message: If we are to progress at all, we must not only hear, but learn from what is contained within the silence.”

Author Biography

Sulaiman Addonia is a British-Eritrean-Ethiopian novelist who fled Eritrea as a refugee in childhood. He spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan following the Om Hajar massacre in 1976, and in his early teens he lived and studied in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He arrived in London as an underage unaccompanied refugee without a word of English and went on to earn an MA in Development Studies from SOAS and a BSc in Economics from UCL. His first novel, The Consequences of Love (Chatto & Windus, 2008), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was translated into more than 20 languages. 

Addonia’s essays appear in LitHub, Granta, New York Times, De Standaard, and Passa Porta.  He is a contributor in the anthology Tales of Two Planets (Penguin, 2020, edited by John Freeman) and also Addis Ababa Noir (Akashic Books, 2020, edited by Maaza Mengiste).  Sulaiman Addonia currently lives in Brussels where he has launched a creative writing academy for refugees and asylum seekers & the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival In Exile (AALFIE). In 2021 he was awarded Belgium’s Golden Afro Artistic Award for Literature.