Freedom Lecture: Sulaiman Addonia in conversation with Arnon Grunberg

Sulaiman Addonia writes provocative works of fiction that show the multicolored reality of refugees. Stories not just of trauma, but also of love, sex and autonomy. Arnon Grunberg will engage in conversation with Addonia about telling your story on your own terms.

‘I looked towards the West as this amazing free space. Now I look at writers in the global South and envy them: they’re the ones facing imprisonment, but writing without fear,’ said the Eritrean-Ethiopian-British writer Sulaiman Addonia last year in an interview in The Guardian. For his provocative works of fiction he draws inspiration from his own turbulent life.

Addonia was born around 1975 in Eritrea, but ended up in a Sudanese refugee camp at the age of three after his father was murdered in the Eritrean War of Independence. He later grew up in Saudi Arabia and came to Europe at the age of fifteen.

He has published, among other works, the well-received Silence Is My Mother Tongue (2019) and The Seers (2024), books in which he explores the multicolored reality of refugees by turning them into full-fledged characters, including their erotic desires – The Seers is mostly about the sexual encounters of the protagonist, Hannah. This has disturbed Western editors, but, as Addonia stated: ‘the last thing I’d want to do is to turn my imagination into an oppressive thing.’

Addonia, now based in Belgium, is the founder of the Creative Writing Academy for Refugees & Asylum Seekers in Brussels, where he focusses on helping migrants tell their stories on their own terms. And he is the creator of the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile), a nomadic literary festival with pan-African roots, that moves through Europe and addresses genre-bending literature. 

Programme editor: Veronica Baas

In collaboration with Vfonds

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