The Silent History
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
A generation of children are born without speech, without comprehension, without language entirely.
At first, they are just medical curiosities. But their numbers swell, and soon they grow into an established underclass, occupying squats and communes around the world. To some they are seen as a threat; to others, as a salvation. Some suspect they may have other abilities beyond our understanding.
The children cannot tell you their story. Instead we rely on The Silent History, a collection of testimonies from those touched by the phenomenon. Parents, doctors, opportunist inventors, cult leaders, and vigilantes, recall what they have endured and what they have inflicted on others. They will take you from a recognisable present to a real and unsettling future. You will not want to look away.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Form follows, explores, and transforms function in this novel, originally written as an iPhone/iPad app and now being published, and holding its own, on the printed page. Short narratives field reports, log entries, anecdotal memoirs offer a jigsaw-puzzle oral history starting in the present (2011) and advancing into the future (2044), documenting the evolution of a disaster, as an increasing number of children fail to develop language, not due to physical or mental impairment, but due to indifference. Whether this indifference is the result of drugs, the environment, mindless innovation, or biological mutation (no one can be sure), for "silents," language has no meaning. A teacher describes futile attempts at classroom management; a politician recounts using the situation to career advantage; a doctor details speech therapy without verbal communication; a New Age groupie confesses to feeling envious. Because they are marginalized, ostracized, and demonized, some silents withdraw into clandestine communities, rather than submit to technology that imposes speech, if not self-expression. Storytelling, both on screen and in print, relies on character, setting, plot, theme, and, of course, language. Three authors work together here to master these elements, presenting an ingenious variety of perspectives and locations that create a richly textured vision of a dystopian future. If the ending is a letdown after so much inventiveness, readers are left with plenty to think about, including the role of language in family and society, personal development and interpersonal relations, and communication and community.
