Kenneth Searight (born Arthur Kenneth Searight) was the creator of the Sona language.
Searight was born in Kensington, England in December of 1883. He attended Charterhouse public school (a boarding school) for his childhood and teenage years. In 1904 he received a commission into the Queen's Own West Kent Regiment, and was stationed for several years in India. It was here that he befriended English author E.M. Forster (A Passage to India). His regiment was later reassigned to Iraq, and then to Egypt. Searight also enjoyed leave time around the Mediterranean Sea -- especially in Italy.
It could be guessed that it was during this extensive travel that Searight developed his interest in linguistics and his familiarity with Middle Eastern and Far Eastern languages and cultures.
Searight retired to Rome in 1926. In 1934 he contacted CKOgden? to discuss publishing the SonaBook. Ogden was the creator of a modified version of English known as "Basic English", which consisted of a reduced vocabulary (only 850 words) and simplified grammar. Ogden was also the editor of the Psyche Miniatures series at Cambridge University, and he approved and published the SonaBook, as well as writing an introduction for it.
Searight was a homosexual, or as he preferred to call it, a "pederast". He preferred men in their teens and early twenties. There is some reason to believe that Searight was the model for the hero of Forster's novel Maurice.
Although the SonaBook is Searight's only published work, he also compiled a 600-page manuscript work called the Paidikion. It was made up of homoerotic stories, a detailed listing of his sexual conquests -- the "Paidiology" -- and a 137-page verse autobiography entitled "The Furnace".
Searight died in 1957. Ogden originally received the Paidikion, but it was later retrieved from a used bookstore for half a crown. The book was never published as a whole, but excerpts were included in the International Journal of Greek Love in 1966.