The Garden of Burning Sand is the new novel from Corban Addison that maintains his interest in shining light on human rights issues around the world.
On a dark night in Lusaka, Zambia, an adolescent girl is brutally assaulted. In shock, she cannot speak. Her identity is a mystery. Where did she come from? Was the attack a random street crime or a premeditated act?
The girl's case is taken up by Zoe Fleming, a human rights lawyer working in Africa. A betrayal in her own past gives the girl's plight a special resonance for Zoe, and she is determined to find the perpetrator and seek justice.
Also investigating on behalf of the Zambian police is Joseph Kabuta. At first reluctant to work together, they team up. Yet their progress is thwarted at every turn and it soon becomes clear that their opponents are every bit as powerful and determined as they are corrupt.
We're pleased to share this piece from Corban Addison himself – on what inspired this novel, and what inspires him to continue to write.
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The Garden of Burning Sand – Personal Notes
Violence against women and girls is a problem so vast and multi-faceted that most people don't know where to begin talking about it, let alone doing something about it. The way to overcome that paralysis is to personalize the issue. When I imagine my own daughter as the victim of rape, of spousal abuse, of female genital mutilation, or femicide, I don't have to work hard to care about the issue. When I read a story about an African child much like my own daughter, suddenly my concern expands and encompasses the world. That, in a nutshell, is the vision behind The Garden of Burning Sand.
The idea for Garden came from a talk my wife and I heard about an NGO working with special needs children in Zambia. We were mortified to learn that 80% of Zambian children with special needs die before the age of five. We were also shocked to find out that many of the girls that do survive are raped by men in their community—often a neighbor, a relative, or a friend of the family—and that the rapists are rarely punished for their crimes. Both of us saw a story there, and so I decided to pursue it. I soon realized, however, that the story had to be bigger than Zambia; it had to be bigger than Africa. It had to be a global story because gender violence is everywhere. It's all around us.
It's extraordinary: One in three of the world's women are physically or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. That's over one billion women. I had no idea of that before I started researching Garden. The more I explored the problem, the more committed I became to combatting it. As a husband, as a father, as a man, I feel especially compelled to lend my voice to the cause, for we men are at the root of it. In almost every case, we are the abusers; we are the rapists. If the tide of gender violence is going to stop, we are the ones who must stop it.
When I was in Zambia, I had the privilege of spending time with some friends who adopted three children with Down syndrome. Two of their children are adolescent girls. Watching them play with their dolls, tickle the ivories on their piano, and delight in a special dinner at a restaurant, I was sickened by the thought that there were men in Lusaka, perhaps men who walked by their house on a daily basis, who would rape them if given a chance. In a private moment, I asked their father how his girls would interpret such a violation. He shook his head sadly: "They wouldn't understand it," he said. "They would have no idea how to make sense of the pain."
The truth is that no victim of gender violence—even those without special needs—ever really makes sense of the pain. The suffering is senseless, irrational. The only way to move beyond it is to move through it. And in most cases, the only way to move through it is to share the secret, to find support from a caring community, and to learn that human dignity is not destroyed by violence; in fact, it can be empowered by it. It is my hope that The Garden of Burning Sand will serve as a catalyst for readers to talk about the gender violence that exists in their communities—perhaps even in their lives—and to connect that with the plight of women and girls half a world away. In our global age, we are all in this together. If we are going to make progress on this issue, we must act with common purpose.
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Thanks to Harper Collins Canada and to Corban Addison, for sharing this blog.