'Behrouz Boochani’s memoir of his arrival at Christmas Island as an asylum seeker, and his subsequent indefinite incarceration on Manus Island, is a miracle of survival and of testimony. To tell the unthinkable in impossible circumstances is an extraordinary act of courage and truth-telling. It is a searing, confronting, powerful testimony of indefinite detention and systematic torture. More than that, it is a work of resistance in the genre of decolonial literature,
1 a significant piece of prison literature, and a scorching critique of refugee policies here in Australia, and by extension, globally.' (Introduction)