The Seers

A novel by Sulaiman Addonia April 22, 2025 • 5.5 x 8.25 • 136 pages • 9781566897211 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. About the Author Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist. He spent his early life in a refugee camp and went on to earn an MA from the University of London. His first novel, The Consequences of Love (Chatto & Windus, 2008), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and translated into more than 20 languages. His second novel, Silence Is My Mother Tongue (Indigo Press, 2019; Graywolf Press, 2020), was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards. Addonia currently lives in Brussels where he founded the Creative Writing Academy for Refugees & Asylum Seekers and the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival In Exile. Praise for The Seers A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025 “This short, sensual book is filled with tenderness for those caught in impersonal structures, and rages with anti-colonial anger at a UK asylum system that rends apart individuals and communities.” —Literary Hub “The violence that marks the world’s outcasts becomes, in this compelling prose, an ode to the strength to survive. What an intense and passionate book.” —Stefan Hertmans, author of War and Turpentine “The Seers is an incandescent howl of anti-colonial rage and insatiable desire; a powerful and taboo-breaking love letter to a London made of stories, and a scathing indictment of the UK asylum system’s ability to break hearts and bodies to pieces again and again.” —Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath “Addonia’s writing is full of energy that engages the whole body. The voice is vivid, alive and real. It has elements of my favorite writers in it; I thought of Albert Camus, Claude McKay, Junot Díaz, and Binyavanga Wainaina while reading it. Brutal and tender in equal measure.” —Raymond Antrobus, author of All the Names Given “The Seers is a knockout. A complex novel of generational history, trauma, eroticism…Not only is this a novel that needs to be read now, its ambition, humanity, anger and an unforgettable narrator mark it out as a classic.” —Niven Govinden, author of Diary of a Film “This is an exquisitely brilliant novel. Politically exciting and wild and beautiful. I really love young Hannah, a refugee who uses fucking as a genuinely radical act of seeing and being.” —Holly Pester, author of The Lodgers Praise for Silence Is My Mother Tongue Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction Finalist for the 2021 CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction “Elegant and descriptive . . . A riveting, mysterious, almost magical and delightfully chaotic depiction of the inner workings of an East African refugee camp.” —The New York Times Book Review “The exchange of masculine and feminine roles within the context of a sexually conservative culture makes for a gripping and courageous narrative.” —The Guardian “Jagged yet subtle. . . . The structure keeps upending the ordinary. Silence Is My Mother Tongue reads like a picaresque in a nutshell, tightly confined yet full of reversals. Some are swift as a finger-snap, others unfold like a ballad. . . . Addonia [has] asserted the humanity of people often cloaked in shadow.” —The Brooklyn Rail