The Seers
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
With echoes of Zora Neale Hurston and Clarice Lispector, Sulaiman Addonia turns from the broader immigration narrative of land and nations to look closely at the erotic and intimate lives of asylum seekers.
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 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sensational latest from Addonia (Silence Is My Mother Tongue) catalogs a 17-year-old Eritrean refugee's wild sexual fantasies in a single-paragraph, stream-of-consciousness monologue. Narrator Hannah lives in London's Kilburn neighborhood with a social worker, Diana, while awaiting a verdict on her asylum application. She becomes enamored with Anne, another refugee who works at a fast-food restaurant in Piccadilly Circus, but also can't stop thinking about a man named Bina-Balozi, whom she enjoys pegging. Her relationship with Diana amounts to a tug-of-war between the erotic and the platonic: "Please stay, she said, as she slid her nipple back between my lips." As Hannah settles into her new life, she reads her mother's diary, one of the few possessions she took with her from Eritrea, and learns about her parents' sex life: "I pushed my foot through the curtains, positioned it between the candles, and introduced my feet to Xehay's mouth." Addonia's mesmerizing prose drives the narrative from one carnal thought to the next as Hannah endures racist taunts and the stress of living in limbo. It's a passionate and seductive tale of resilience.
