Their powerful and complicated love affairs are lived against a backdrop of international turmoil. One begins in Montreal, the other in Paris, and characters explore other parts of the world as a result of these relationships-Phnom Penh, Sarajevo, Toronto, The Hague. In The Disappeared and in Speak, Silence, Canadian characters have relationships with men who are not Canadian. This is my world, and it is the world I want to reflect in my storytelling.

They have romantic relationships and friendships and work affiliations across cultures and languages and international borders. The characters in these novels live in a world that is connected by international travel and communications. In both novels, characters live with grave historical events-in The Disappeared, a genocide, and in Speak, Silence, an international war crimes trial. This novel celebrates the courageous women who spoke out against this brutal and widespread tool of war and, in doing so, changed both international law and the world’s consciousness.Īllan Vorda: The Disappeared, your novel about the relationship of a young Canadian girl with a Cambodian man, seems to have some similarities to your most recent novel, Speak, Silence.

Echlin has been a documentary filmmaker, editor, and teacher, and has travelled around the world, often infusing this experience into her novels, which include Under the Visible Life (Penguin Canada, 2016) and The Disappeared (Black Cat, 2009), a critically acclaimed book heralded by Khaled Hosseini as “nothing short of a masterpiece.” She currently teaches at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies and for the Vermont College of Fine Arts.Įchlin’s most recent novel, Speak, Silence ( Hamish Hamilton, $22.95), is a fictionalized account of the Bosnian women who testified at The Hague about their experiences of crimes against humanity, focusing on the estimated 60,000 women and children who were raped during the genocidal Bosnian War. She has received degrees from McGill University and Paris-Sorbonne University, as well as her PhD in English literature from York University her thesis was on the translation of Ojibwe Nanabush myths. Kim Echlin was born in Burlington, Ontario, where her high school teachers noticed her writing talent early on.

The disappeared by kim echlin