BooksCanadian

Speak, Silence

A novel by Kim Echlin.

Kim Echlin

CBC Books Posted: Jan 25, 2021 1:34 PM EST | Last Updated: May 25, 2021

It's been eleven 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 for a Toronto travel magazine, 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 belief or recognition. Sitting in a small caf, Kosmos introduces Gota to the new woman in his life, Edina. 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. Suddenly, a trip fueled by long-lost love becomes a passionate fight for justice: Gota is determined to tell their stories and will stop at nothing to make their voices heard. Before long, she finds her life entwined with the community of women and travels with them to The Hague to confront their abusers. The events Gota covers and the stories she hears will change her life forever.

Written in Kim Echlin's masterfully luminescent prose,Speak, Silenceweaves 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 shame 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. (From Hamish Hamilton)

Kim Echlin is a writer who lives in Toronto. Her other novels includeElephant Winter, Dagmar's Daughter,The DisappearedandUnder the Visible Life.The Disappearedwas shortlisted for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

From the book

I had watched the war on television in Toronto for years. I watched life in a city under siege, saw people from a bread line bleeding on the ground. The cameras pulled back and I saw smoke and fire from apartment towers. My name is Gota Dobson. I saw these images on the same screen that I watchedLooney Tuneswith my only child. Intolerable shame. To watch old women in good leather shoes hurrying over rubble along the edges of buildings. To watch boys and girls playing on tanks. To watch people falling like broken clay pigeons in skeet practice. To change the channel. To live in the unattended moment. To be where I was not.

There was theTimecover of a crowd of prisoners behind wire fences, their ribs like empty cages, with a caption in red:Must It Go On?The war did not abate and the news remained clear and constant and the world struggled to rouse itself.

People knew. Still it went on. Year after year I watched. When Biddy was asleep at night and my work was put away for another day, I watched.

To know is not enough.

FromSpeak, Silenceby Kim Echlin,published by Hamish Hamilton Canada. Copyright Kim Echlin. Reprinted by arrangement with the publisher.

Interviews with Kim Echlin

The Sunday Magazine18:58'Speak, Silence' author Kim Echlin on the importance of survivors' stories

Canadian writer Kim Echlin weaves testimony from Bosnian War rape camps into a new work of fiction that shows the power of speaking up.

Other books by Kim Echlin

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