Silence Is a Sense
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
"This is not just good storytelling, but a blueprint for survival." —The New York Times Book Review
A transfixing and beautifully rendered novel about a refugee’s escape from civil war—and the healing power of community.
A young woman sits in her apartment, watching the small daily dramas of her neighbors across the way. She is an outsider, a mute voyeur, safe behind her windows, and she sees it all—the sex, the fights, the happy and unhappy families. Journeying from her war-torn Syrian homeland to this unnamed British city has traumatized her into silence, and her only connection to the world is the magazine column she writes under the pseudonym “the Voiceless,” where she tries to explain the refugee experience without sensationalizing it—or revealing anything about herself. Gradually, though, the boundaries of her world expand. She ventures to the corner store, to a bookstore and a laundromat, and to a gathering at a nearby mosque. And it isn’t long before she finds herself involved in her neighbors’ lives. When an anti-Muslim hate crime rattles the neighborhood, she has to make a choice: Will she remain a voiceless observer, or become an active participant in a community that, despite her best efforts, is quickly becoming her own?
Layla AlAmmar, a Kuwaiti American writer and student of Arab literature, delivers here a brilliant and affecting story about memory, revolution, loss, and safety. Most of all, and with melodic prose, Silence Is a Sense reminds us just how fundamental human connection is to survival.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alammar's evocative second novel (after The Pact We Made) delves into the world of a traumatized, mute, and unnamed journalist who has escaped civil war in Syria for England. There, amid recollections of the violence, she occupies herself with her work as a journalist for an English magazine, and in spying on—and occasionally interacting with—neighbors in her apartment complex. The narrator, whose journalism is published under the pseudonym The Voiceless, muses about religious differences among Muslim people in Syria and her fellow immigrants. However, her editor, Josie, wants her to write more about herself to boost her audience. Though Josie initially understands the narrator's perspective toward her fellow Muslims, she later insists the narrator is "glossing over the very real, unequivocal violence" committed by extremists. Meanwhile, tensions grow at the narrator's mosque, and a "Unity Feast" is invaded by white supremacists who are angry at the presence of Muslims in the country. Though the pacing is slow, the conflicts over immigration and racism are brilliantly distilled, and they dovetail seamlessly with the narrator's lyrical, increasingly defiant narration. Patient readers will find much to ponder.
