BBC Radio 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK FORWARD PRIZE 2019 SHORTLIST POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE 2019 The
long-awaited new collection from Ilya Kaminsky: a remarkable parable in poems which asks us
what is silence? Deaf Republic opens in a time of political unrest in an occupied territory. It
is uncertain where we are or when in what country or during what conflict but we come to
recognise that these events are also happening here right now. This astonishing parable in
poems unfolds episodically like a play its powerful narrative provoked by a tragic opening
scene: when soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy the gunshot becomes the last thing
the citizens hear - in that moment all have gone deaf. Inside this silence their dissent
becomes coordinated by sign language. The story then follows the private lives of townspeople
encircled by public violence: a newly married couple Alfonso and Sonya expecting their child
the daring Momma Galya instigating the insurgency from her puppet theatre and Galya's
puppeteers covertly teaching signs by day and by night heroically luring soldiers one by one
to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story an elegy and an urgent plea Deaf
Republic confronts our time's vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of
them.
