A Long and Speaking Silence

Cleric Chih is newly appointed and setting out on a first trip as a cleric. The town of Luntien is getting ready for the start of the rainy season and the visitors it brings. Muyese refugees are also arriving there, steadily, and the townspeople do not want them.

Chih's work is to collect stories. Here that means writing down the names and histories of the refugees, so that any who have relatives elsewhere might one day be reunited with them.

This is a novella, the seventh in the Singing Hills Cycle, which has won the Hugo Award. It is also a prequel, set well before the earlier books follow Chih through their later adventures. Each book in the series is self-contained, so a reader can start here without having read the others.

Slow and quiet, the book rests on the small act of keeping records. Through it, the book looks at displacement and at how refugees are treated in places that are strange to them. It also considers the role stories play in preserving a people's identity and culture.