Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Silence Is a Sense

Silence Is a Sense

Alammar, Layla

Paperback

General FictionLiterary Fiction

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ISBN10: 1643752553
ISBN13: 9781643752556
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: Mar 1 2022
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.20
Language: English
This is not just good storytelling, but a blueprint for survival. --The New York Times Book Review

A transfixing and beautifully rendered novel about a refugee's escape from civil war--and the healing power of community.

A young woman sits in her apartment, watching the small daily dramas of her neighbors across the way. She is an outsider, a mute voyeur, safe behind her windows, and she sees it all--the sex, the fights, the happy and unhappy families. Journeying from her war-torn Syrian homeland to this unnamed British city has traumatized her into silence, and her only connection to the world is the magazine column she writes under the pseudonym the Voiceless, where she tries to explain the refugee experience without sensationalizing it--or revealing anything about herself. Gradually, though, the boundaries of her world expand. She ventures to the corner store, to a bookstore and a laundromat, and to a gathering at a nearby mosque. And it isn't long before she finds herself involved in her neighbors' lives. When an anti-Muslim hate crime rattles the neighborhood, she has to make a choice: Will she remain a voiceless observer, or become an active participant in a community that, despite her best efforts, is quickly becoming her own?

Layla AlAmmar, a Kuwaiti American writer and student of Arab literature, delivers here a brilliant and affecting story about memory, revolution, loss, and safety. Most of all, and with melodic prose, Silence Is a Sense reminds us just how fundamental human connection is to survival.

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