Speak, Silence

WINNER OF THE 2021 TORONTO BOOK AWARD

NOMINATED FOR THE 2022 EVERGREEN AWARD

Praise for Speak, Silence:

“[P]owerful . . . an incredibly forceful book that insists readers sit up and pay attention; despite the gains made with the Foča trial, most of us continue to turn a blind eye to abuses taking place around the world. With [Speak, Silence], Echlin demands more of us.”
—Quill & Quire, starred review

“Through a story of tragedy and community rebuilding, Speak, Silence hooks the reader from the beginning to the last page. . . . In an impeccably well-researched text, Kim Echlin portrays the horrors of the Bosnian war through the stories of systemic sexual assault in three generations of a Muslim family. With prose that portrays both horror and hope, Echlin takes the reader on a journey that follows women of all ages as they force the world to acknowledge for the first time that rape is not only a crime against an individual, it is also a crime against humanity.”
—2021 Toronto Book Awards Jury

“The chess [in Speak, Silence] echoes the strategy and flexibility of the courtroom, with the dogged, methodical preparation and the psychodynamics of each side. . . . Echlin’s books, difficult as their subjects can be, are much more than worth the pain. Beyond their considerable literary merit and pleasure, they offer a richer, deeper, truer entrée than non-fiction can provide into happenings we would often prefer to ignore. They give us a peerless chance to listen.”  
—Literary Review of Canada

“[A] necessary novel. . . . Speak, Silence is a bridge between those purely fictional stories of women’s trauma at the hands of men, and the purely non-fiction books about the war crime of rape. . . . [Y]ou need to read this book.”  
—Toronto Star

“Writing about living through a war draws on some of our most volatile emotions and fears—the balance between trauma and sensationalism is a precarious one. Writing about the rage and humiliation of women raped in war takes this already precarious balance several degrees further. Speak, Silence ushers us into a community of women who guide us with sensitivity, clarity and love through their resistance to being stereotyped as victims.”
—Ellen Elias-Bursac, translator of South Slavic languages and author of Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal

“Between 1991 and 1995, an estimated 60,000 women were raped in wars in the former Yugoslavia. But the women did not allow these rapes to become an historical footnote or ‘collateral damage.’ They witnessed their ordeal in The Hague’s International Tribunal. Thanks to these women, the world understood—for the first time—rape as a weapon of war and found the accused guilty of a Crime Against Humanity. This carefully researched and well-crafted novel, based on these true events, is an impressive monument to the women.”
—Slavenka Drakulić, journalist and author of They Would Never Hurt a Fly

“[Speak, Silence] is a testament both to empathy and also to its limits. . . . It’s brutal in a sense, but just as beautiful, Echlin embodying both-ness again by making death-and-violence and undying love both absolutely true at once.”
—Kerry Clare, author of Mitzi Bytes and Waiting for a Star to Fall

“Speak, Silence is well-researched and beautifully crafted. The narrative slips through time, sometimes moving quickly through events and sometimes in slow and deliberate detail. Echlin’s prose is both succinct and eloquent, and her dialogue shines, sometimes more in what isn’t said than what is on the page. . . . [It] is a crushing call to bear witness to the brutal crimes committed against women in the Yugoslav wars.”
—Cloud Lake Literary

“[Echlin] writes with the beauty of a poet, and the empathy of a family member. . . . [Speak, Silence] is a tender meditation on female strength, our willpower, and our motivation to simply keep going. . . . Echlin gives us a glimpse into this unexplainable dichotomy in a memorable novel that is sure to hit the prize lists.”
—Book Reviews for Bookworms