Speak, Silence

Category: Book
By (author): Echlin, Kim
Subject:  FICTION / Canadian
  FICTION / Contemporary Women
  FICTION / Literary
  FICTION / Political
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: March 2021
Format: Book-hardcover
Pages: 208
Size: 8.52in x 5.87in x 0.78in
Our Price:
$ 29.95
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Additional Notes

From The Publisher*From the internationally bestselling and Giller-shortlisted author of The Disappeared comes an astounding, poetic novel about war and loss, power and shame, and the strength of women through it all.

It's been eleven years since Gota has seen Kosmos, yet she still finds herself fantasizing about their intimate year together in Paris. Now it's 1999 and, working as a journalist for a Toronto travel magazine, she hears about a film festival in Sarajevo, where she knows Kosmos will be with his theatre company. She takes the assignment to investigate the fallout of the Bosnian war--and to reconnect with the love of her life.

But when they are reunited, she finds a man, and a country, altered beyond belief or recognition. Sitting in a small café, Kosmos introduces Gota to the new woman in his life, Edina. While Gota treads the precarious terrain of her evolving connection to Kosmos, she and Edina forge an unexpected bond. A lawyer and a force to be reckoned with, Edina exposes the sexual violence that she and thousands of others survived. Suddenly, a trip fueled by long-lost love becomes a passionate fight for justice: Gota is determined to tell their stories and will stop at nothing to make their voices heard. Before long, she finds her life entwined with the community of women and travels with them to The Hague to confront their abusers. The events Gota covers--and the stories she hears--will change her life forever.

Written in Kim Echlin's masterfully luminescent prose, Speak, Silence weaves together the experiences of a resilient sisterhood and tells the story of the real-life trial that would come to shape history. In a heart-wrenching tale of shame and loss and a beautiful illustration of power and love, Echlin explores what it means to speak out against the very people who would do anything to silence you.
Review Quote*"Writing about living through a war draws on some of our most volatile emotions and fears-the balance between trauma and sensationalism is a precarious one. Writing about the rage and humiliation of women raped in war takes this already precarious balance several degrees further. Speak, Silence ushers us into a community of women who guide us with sensitivity, clarity and love through their resistance to being stereotyped as victims."
-Ellen Elias-Bursac, translator of South Slavic languages and author of Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal

"Between 1991 and 1995, an estimated 60,000 women were raped in wars in the former Yugoslavia. But the women did not allow these rapes to become an historical footnote or ‘collateral damage.' They witnessed their ordeal in The Hague's International Tribunal. Thanks to these women, the world understood-for the first time-rape as a weapon of war and found the accused guilty of a Crime Against Humanity. This carefully researched and well-crafted novel, based on these true events, is an impressive monument to the women."
-Slavenka Drakulić, journalist and author of They Would Never Hurt a Fly
Biographical NoteAward-winning author KIM ECHLIN lives in Toronto. She is the author of Elephant Winter and Dagmar's Daughter, and her third novel, The Disappeared, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction and was published in 20 countries. Her most recent novel Under the Visible Life was critically acclaimed, endorsed by Khaled Hosseini and declared "nothing short of a masterpiece" by Quill & Quire.