Speak, Silence

De: Kim Echlin

Narrado por: Athena Karkanis

Winner of the 2021 Toronto Book Award

Nominated for the 2022 Evergreen Award

From the internationally best-selling and Giller-shortlisted author of The Disappeared, an astounding poetic novel about war and loss, suffering and courage, and the strength of women through it all.

It’s been 11 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, 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 recognition. Kosmos introduces Gota to Edina, the woman he has always loved. 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 in the war. Before long, Gota finds her life entwined with the community of women and travels with them to The Hague to confront their abusers. The events she 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 suffering 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.

©2021 Kim Echlin (P)2021 Hamish Hamilton

Reseñas de la Crítica

Winner of the 2021 Toronto Book Award

Nominated for the 2022 Evergreen Award

“[P]owerful...an incredibly forceful book that insists readers sit up and pay attention; despite the gains made with the Foča trial, most of us continue to turn a blind eye to abuses taking place around the world. With her [Speak, Silence], Echlin demands more of us.” (Quill & Quire, starred review)

“Through a story of tragedy and community rebuilding, Speak, Silence hooks the reader from the beginning to the last page.... In an impeccably well-researched text, Kim Echlin portrays the horrors of the Bosnian war through the stories of systemic sexual assault in three generations of a Muslim family. With prose that portrays both horror and hope, Echlin takes the reader on a journey that follows women of all ages as they force the world to acknowledge for the first time that rape is not only a crime against an individual, it is also a crime against humanity.” (2021 Toronto Book Awards Jury)

"The chess [in Speak, Silence] echoes the strategy and flexibility of the courtroom, with the dogged, methodical preparation and the psychodynamics of each side.... Echlin’s books, difficult as their subjects can be, are much more than worth the pain. Beyond their considerable literary merit and pleasure, they offer a richer, deeper, truer entrée than non-fiction can provide into happenings we would often prefer to ignore. They give us a peerless chance to listen.” (Literary Review of Canada)

excellently read for unfortunate events

loved the narrator and her ability to change character & dialect. i look fwd to more reads with Athena Karkanis. very educational & b4ings awareness to past events. sorry for true unfortunate events