Sulaiman Addonia’s essay WRITING LIKE DEGAS PAINTS has been shortlisted for the Brittle Paper Award for Essays & Think Pieces 2019. Addonia’s essay, which explores how his latest novel SILENCE IS MY MOTHER TONGUE was inspired by the works of Degas, was published by Granta in October 2018 and can be read here. Launched in 2017, Brittle Paper’s annual awards aim to recognize the finest original pieces of literary writing by Africans published online — writing that has prompted, enhanced, or defined conversations. The winner of the Essays & Think Pieces Award will be announced on 10th December 2019.

Addonia’s second novel SILENCE IS MY MOTHER TONGUE was published by The Indigo Press in October 2018 and will be published in the US by Graywolf in 2021. Russian rights have been sold to Arkadia, and Italian rights to Francesco Brioschi Editore (at auction). It was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2019 and is a New Statesman Book of the Year 2019. Brittle Paper published an essay about the writing of this novel yesterday – THE VOICES I OVERCAME TO WRITE SILENCE IS MY MOTHER TONGUE, which can be read here.

Praise for SILENCE IS MY MOTHER TONGUE

‘It is brutal on aid politics, it is damning on FGM, yet this book is infused with love as Saba, the heroine, outwits all the voyeurism of the refugee camp and of the novel form.’ — Preti Taneja, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2019

'Addonia spent several years as a child in a Sudanese refugee camp and you can sense the impact of that period on his richly written second novel, which brims with the sensory flavours of remembered experience... A sobering reminder of the way war brutally circumscribes the shape of women's lives.' — The Daily Mail/The Scottish Daily Mail

'While his portrayal of the exiled community that tries to remake its home in the camp is brilliantly alive with incidents and personalities, more beguiling still is his double portrait of teenage Saba and her brother Hagos... a gripping and courageous narrative... A feminist book... and exhilaratingly, so much more.' — The Guardian

Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist. His first novel, THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, was translated into more than 20 languages. He currently lives in Brussels where he has launched a creative writing academy for refugees and asylum seekers & the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile). He appears regularly at international literary festivals.

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