World Literature: Sulaiman Addonia (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Britain) “The Seers”

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh

Reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston and Clarice Lispector, Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist Sulaiman Addonia turns a wandering eye toward the erotic and intimate lives of asylum seekers in his forthcoming novel, The Seers. Sulaiman visits City of Asylum this Spring in the company of moderator and City of Asylum Curator for World Literature, Anderson Tepper.

“Sulaiman Addonia’s Silence Is My Mother Tongue was one of my favorite books of recent memory. Only Addonia could take the grim backdrop of a Sudanese refugee camp and turn it into such a richly-layered story of sibling love and erotic liberation. In his latest, The Seers, an Eritrean asylum-seeker in London sets off on her own adventure of self-exploration, defying all expectations and remapping her world.” —Anderson Tepper

Set around a foster home in Kilburn and in the squares of Bloomsbury where its protagonist Hannah sleeps, The Seers chronicles the first weeks of a young Eritrean refugee’s life in London. As Hannah grapples with her own agency in a strange country, her sexual encounters become an unapologetic expression of self—a defiant cry against the endless bureaucracy of immigration.

In a single, gripping, continuous paragraph, The Seers moves between past and present to paint a surreal and sensual portrait of a life being burned up in search of refuge. For Hannah, caught between worlds in the UK asylum system, the West is both savior and abuser, seeking always to shape her, but never succeeding in suppressing her voice.