Freedom Lecture: Sulaiman Addonia

Novelist Sulaiman Addonia spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan; his adolescence in Saudi-Arabi; received asylum in the UK, and currently lives in Brussels. In his Freedom Lecture he asks the question: how to love while being dislocated? Afterwards Arnon Grunberg will enage in conversation with Addonia.

Displacement plays a central role in Adonnia’s work. His second novel, Silence is my mother tongue is mostly staged in a refugee camp whilst his latest novel, The seers revolves around Hannah, who suddenly finds herself in a temporary home in London with a refugee status.

Whilst the lives Addonia’s characters move through are harsh, even traumatic; his novels are undeniably tender, as Hannah finds her humanity in reclaiming her sexual agency in inhumane conditions. In so doing Addonia addresses themes as resistance, survival, sex, autonomy and displacement.

Addonia also pushes these conversations in public debate and the literary scene writ large: he is the founder of the Creative Writing Academy for Refugees & Asylum Seekers in Brussels where Addonia 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.

Freedom is something that we in The Netherlands typically take for granted. In the series, De Balie has welcomed freedom fighters like Iranian filmmaker Niloofar Azimian, Egyptian writer and activist Nawal el Saadawi, Ugandan LGBT activist Frank Mugisha, Hungarian journalist Veronika Munk and French philosopher Didier Eribon. We share their stories, spread their message and learn from their struggle.