A fascinating in-conversation event about writing the refugee experience with Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist Sulaiman Addonia, whose acclaimed novels offer an insider’s view of life, love, and language through the lens of displacement.
In partnership with the National Centre for Writing. Presented as part of the Platforma Festival (October 2025) produced by Counterpoints Arts.
Pay what you wish. Suitable for ages 18+
Drawing on his darkly poetic novels The Seers and Silence Is My Mother Tongue, Addonia will reflect on the role of intimacy and agency in narratives of migration, the healing power of art, and how writing has shaped his personal journey, from arriving as an unaccompanied minor seeking asylum to becoming a celebrated author and activist.
Sulaiman Addonia’s third novel, The Seers, follows the first weeks of a homeless Eritrean refugee in London. Set around a foster home in Kilburn, in the squares of Bloomsbury where its protagonist sleeps, and against the backdrop of the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the UK asylum system, the novel considers intergenerational histories and colonial trauma alongside the psychological and sexual lives of refugees, insisting that the erotic and intimate side of life is as much a part of someone’s story as land and nations are.
About the author
Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist. He spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan, and his early teens in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He arrived in London as an underage unaccompanied refugee without a word of English and went on to earn an MA in Development Studies from SOAS and a BSc in Economics from UCL.
His first novel, The Consequences of Love (Chatto & Windus, 2008), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was translated into more than 20 languages. His second novel, Silence is My Mother Tongue (Indigo Press, 2019; Graywolf, 2020), was a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards 2021, the Firecracker (CLMP) Awards, the inaugural African Literary Award from The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, and longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Fiction. The Seers (Prototype, 2024) was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2025 and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2025.
His essays appear in LitHub, Granta, Freeman’s, The New York Times, De Standaard and Passa Porta. He is a contributor to Tales of Two Planets (Penguin, 2020) and Addis Ababa Noir (Akashic Books, 2020). A lifelong advocate of the value of creative writing for refugees, Addonia is also the founder of the Creative Writing Academy for Refugees and Asylum Seekers and the Asmara-Adiss Literary Festival in Exile (AALFIE).
‘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
‘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
Photo: Fred Debrock
About the National Centre for Writing
National Centre for Writing is a National Portfolio Organisation for Arts Council England and the literature development agency for the East of England based in Norwich, England’s first UNESCO City of Literature. NCW promotes, commissions, and supports new writing, writers, and underrepresented voices; inspires communities through the power of writing, reading and literary translation; nurtures literary talent and has a year-round creative writing learning programme of courses, workshops, and resources. Find out more
