Addonia writes in English, which he learned when he arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied minor from Eritrea via a refugee camp in Sudan. His second novel draws on his experience of the camp and is bursting with remarkable ideas and images.
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. Hagos – perhaps electively, perhaps not – does not speak and cannot read or write, but he and Saba communicate by other means. Indeed, their relationship is so close that their identities have begun to blur and merge into each other.
The exchange of masculine and feminine roles within the context of a sexually conservative culture makes for a gripping and courageous narrative. Both Saba and Hagos ultimately gain from the trade-off and find the strength to break out of the suffocating expectations their community has of them. A feminist book, then, and, exhilaratingly, so much more.
• Silence Is My Mother Tongue is published by Indigo. To order a copy for £11.43 (RRP £12.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
