A review by Abokali Jimomi
For thousands of years, we’ve been waiting for a story like this. The Timi-Ala has found its storyteller. In Sümi mythology, the Timi-Ala is a spirit both feared and revered who can be both the giver of wealth and the taker of life.
This is the story of Kato, a boy with no voice—a mute—shunned, pitied, and spoken over by the unmute, yet unexpectedly chosen to be the storyteller by the giant Kene, who gives Kato a voice like nobody else can. They converse and learn, cradled by Lakhe, the mother tree who connects the forests, the animals, the giants, the spirits, and the voiceless.
Here, the Timi-Ala, as the in-between, becomes more than a spirit—a bridge to what remains of our fractured memory. So much has been lost in the turning wheels of history—the severing of our indigenous ways, the silencing of voices that once spoke with the forests, rivers, and stars. And yet, through stories like this, something endures.
Huthuka Sumi’s outstanding debut, published by HarperCollins, surprises us with its quiet wisdom and immense compassion. In many ways, it is a blend of magic and deep understanding—an exploration of ourselves through the eyes and ears of a mute child, set against the backdrop of a world on the brink of upheaval: a time when places like ours, caught in the crossfire of empires, were thrust into sudden contact with a violent outside world—when the old ways were swiftly reduced to irrelevance.
Here is a storyteller who, with eloquence and restraint, listens deeply to the silences between myths—to the ache of memory passed down through whispers, songs, poetry, and dreams. He gathers them tenderly and crafts a narrative of lyrical beauty that feels both nostalgic and urgent.
I half-wish I had written this story—the wisdom of our oral traditions, inherited from our ancestors, has never before been written down in words and sentences on paper with such grace. The author renders the unspeakable visible, the forgotten unforgettable. And in doing so, he gives back to us what history tried to take.
The mute, the unspeakable—Kato, the protagonist—is me, is us. His voice rises above both the noise and the silence of our world. He is our mountains and our Earth speaking—reminding us of our field spirits, our forest spirits, and the very soul of our natural world, from which we have now parted ways.
Giants embodies everything I grew up listening to, but now told with a rare emotional intelligence and a deep, quiet empathy. The novel nurtures layers of stories within a story—tales of wonder and truth long buried beneath our moss-covered rocks, where rivers rush past the stoic mountains that have stood patient beneath the ever-changing skies of our memory—our Sümi, our Naga, our shared human memory—for millennia.
Kene’s parting leaves a chasm—a wound carved by history’s terrible bargain, one no magic could ever mend. And yet, there were still pathways—ones only storytellers could tread.
As the old ways faded—more often forcibly severed into oblivion—Lakhe clung desperately to her roots, growing deeper and more resilient, even as her branches were cut off, awaiting a reawakening in a time like now, when we need them most.
Giants invokes a deep longing—for the lost kinship between humans and the Earth, when we lived not above nature, but beside it, listening and being heard.
This is a story of love that transcends time—a tale that will grip your heart with its emotional depth and quiet power. But more than that, it invites us to imagine what could be: to reflect on what truly matters, and to begin deeper conversations about the many ways of being and living together in our shared world. Giants is nothing short of path-breaking—a work that redefines how stories from the Northeast, and from oral traditions, can be told.
