This Independent Bookshop Week (15 – 22nd of June 2024) bookhaus is continuing our tradition of partnering with Independent publishers. Following our previous partnerships with Tilted Axis and Charco Press, this year we are partnering with Prototype :-

“Founded in 2019 by Jess Chandler, Prototype is a publisher of fiction, poetry, anthologies and interdisciplinary projects. With an emphasis on producing unique and beautiful books, we are committed to championing the work of new voices in free-form contemporary literature.”

As part of our celebrations we will be hosting a launch for The Seers by Sulaiman Addonia.

The Seers follows the first weeks of a homeless Eritrean refugee in London. Set around a foster home in Kilburn and in the squares of Bloomsbury, where its protagonist Hannah sleeps, the novel grapples with how agency is given to the sexual lives of refugees, presenting free-spirited, gender-fluid, trans and androgynous African immigrants, and insisting that the erotic and intimate side of life is as much a part of someone’s story as ‘land and nations’ are.

Hannah arrives in London with her mother’s diary, containing a disturbing sexual story taking place in Keren, Eritrea, where the Allies defeated the Italians in the Second World War. In a gripping, continuous paragraph, The Seers moves between the present day and the past to explore intergenerational histories and colonial trauma alongside the psychological and erotic lives of its characters as their identities are shaped, but refused to be suppressed, by the bureaucratic processes of the UK asylum system.

Sulaiman will be joining us here at bookhaus to discuss the book. Sulaiman Addonia’s UK tour has been made possible with funds from Flip Through Flanders. Tickets cost £6 and include a glass of wine or a soft drink.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions — Read more — Read less