On sex – Anthony Cummins interviewing Sulaiman Addonia in The Guardian, in 2024:

‘It was originally announced in 2021 by a different publisher… The past two years have been the most difficult of my career. A lot of publishers – young, old, black, white, Asian – try to push you towards how marketable your book can become. After American Fiction came out, there was an article in the Evening Standard where black writers were saying they weren’t allowed to write the books they want to write. I’ve been through it with The Seers. It was constantly: “Yeah, but why is it one paragraph? Sulaiman can write really well, but why is he writing this erotic, sexual thing?” Giving space to your madness as a writer – to your playfulness, to your desire for experiment – becomes a white-man field; I really felt I had to stand up for myself. Maybe I’ve taken the concept of freedom into the wilderness [laughs], but, for me, it’s about paying homage to your imagination. I’ve lived in oppressive countries, I know what oppression is – the last thing I’d want to do is to turn my imagination into an oppressive thing.

What makes writing frankly about sex so important? It’s as important as people’s stories of violence. I can’t tell you the fight I had over the scene in my second novel, where Saba arrives at the refugee camp and the first thing she does after waking up is to masturbate. [Editors asked] how is it possible for somebody who just fled a war in abject poverty to have time to do that? For me, it made sense, because she’s suddenly dislocated and still has that memory of being back home when she was making love to herself. But I was told: “You’re telling a story far removed from what the western reader would expect”. The thing is, in a camp, people do have sex! A lot of Eritreans who read that novel also have a problem with it: “This is too private.” But I’m just telling our stories in the freest possible way.’

Read the interview here.

As important as violence.

Maybe even more important, but it’s difficult to say.

The oppressive country, the oppressive publisher, different kinds of oppression, but still.

And yes, what else is there to after a war? Sex. If there’s no other solution, masturbation. And not only after the war, especially during the war.