The Seers

In the squares of Bloomsbury, near an orphanage in Kilburn, a young Eritrean refugee named Hannah grapples with a disturbing sexual story in her mother's diary. As Hannah moves through the UK asylum system haunted by this tale, language becomes a tool of survival and time becomes a placid lake in which the Home Office drowns her.

In a single, gripping, continuous paragraph, Sulaiman Addonia's The Seers moves between past and present to paint a surreal and sensual portrait of one life among thousands. For Hannah, caught between worlds in the endless bureaucracy of immigration, the West is both savior and abuser, refuge from and original cause of harm, seeking always to shape her--but never succeeding in suppressing her voice.