Deaf Republic

by Ilya Kaminsky

Book Reviews

  • This book - a book of poetry - exquisite - everybody read this book: https://t.co/Vsvrpy8lnwLink to Tweet
  • @PENamerica The finalists are: @ilya_poet for Deaf Republic Anne Boyer for The Undying Yiyun Li for Where Reasons End @ReeAmilcarScott for The World Does Not Require You Chris Ware for Rusty BrownLink to Tweet

About Book

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry Ilya Kaminsky’s astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence? Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear—they all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child; the brash Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theater; and Galya’s girls, heroically teaching signing by day and by night luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, Ilya Kaminsky’s long-awaited Deaf Republic confronts our time’s vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.