Daughters of Silence

Strong female voice, a clear-eyed narrator examining self and family.Ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano fills the skies. Flights are grounded throughout Europe. Dessie, a cosmopolitan flight attendant from Canada, finds herself stranded in Addis Ababa her birth place.Grieving her mothers recent death, Dessie heads to see her grandfather, the Shaleqa compelled as much by duty as her own will. But Dessies conflicted past stands in her way. Just as the volcanos eruption disordered Dessies work life, so too does her mothers death cause seismic disruptions in the fine balance of self-deceptions and false histories that uphold her family.As Dessie reacquaints herself with her grandfathers house, familiar yet strangely alien to her diasporic sensibilities, she pieces together the family secrets: the trauma of dictatorship and civil war, the shame of unwed motherhood, the abuse met with silence that gives shape to the mystery of her mothers life.Reminiscent of the deeply immersive writing of Taiye Selasi and Arundhati Roy, Rebecca Fissehas Daughters of Silence is psychologically astute and buoyed both by metaphor and by the vibrant colours of Ethiopia. Its an impressive debut.

Strong female voice, a clear-eyed narrator examining self and family.Ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano fills the skies. Flights are grounded throughout Europe. Dessie, a cosmopolitan flight attendant from Canada, finds herself stranded in Addis Ababa her birth place.Grieving her mothers recent death, Dessie heads to see her grandfather, the Shaleqa compelled as much by duty as her own will. But Dessies conflicted past stands in her way. Just as the volcanos eruption disordered Dessies work life, so too does her mothers death cause seismic disruptions in the fine balance of self-deceptions and false histories that uphold her family.As Dessie reacquaints herself with her grandfathers house, familiar yet strangely alien to her diasporic sensibilities, she pieces together the family secrets: the trauma of dictatorship and civil war, the shame of unwed motherhood, the abuse met with silence that gives shape to the mystery of her mothers life.Reminiscent of the deeply immersive writing of Taiye Selasi and Arundhati Roy, Rebecca Fissehas Daughters of Silence is psychologically astute and buoyed both by metaphor and by the vibrant colours of Ethiopia. Its an impressive debut.