Sounds of silence

摘要

Many animals communicate, but none as successfully as humans. When a group of completely language-deprived deaf children were gathered at a school in Nicaragua in the 1970s, their improvised communication soon became a fully functional sign language like any other. Humans seem born to talk. But not in "The Silent History", a novel about children who simply do not speak. With otherwise normal brains, they neither try nor seem to care. The novel, by Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby and Kevin Moffett, was originally serialised for a smartphone and tablet app, with new instalments appearing periodically and special "field reports" added when readers appeared physically at locations in the novel.