SPEAK, SILENCE

The latest from the internationally bestselling author of the Giller Prize–shortlisted novel The Disappeared—published in over 20 countries—Speak, Silence is a staggering, powerful and poetic fictional retelling of a singular trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that created monumental jurisprudence resulting in war-time rape being named a Crime Against Humanity

Central to the case at the ICTY is a family of three women: Edina, a lawyer from Foca (in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina) who has made it her life's mission to collect the traumatic and horrific testimony from the women of her country; her mother Esma; and daughter Merima; narrated by Gota, a single mother and journalist whose past is inextricably linked with the region that becomes the focus of her writing, Speak, Silence takes readers from Toronto to Foca all the way to The Hague, as women from all walks of life work to bring about this monumental ruling

For readers of Miriam Toews's Women Talking and Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Kim Echlin's Speak, Silence forces us to reckon with one of the darkest, but often overlooked, times in our recent history and brilliantly illustrates the double-edged sword of needing to move forward as a society without sweeping the painful history under the rug