'Over six years of imprisonment on Australia's offshore migrant detention centre, the Kurdish Iranian journalist and writer Behrouz Boochani bore personal witness to the suffering and degradation inflicted on him and his fellow refugees, culminating eventually in his prize-winning book - No Friend but the Mountains - which was painstakingly typed out in text messages while he was incarcerated.
'In the articles, essays, and poems he wrote while detained, he emerged as both a tenacious campaigner and activist, as well as a deeply humane voice which speaks for the indignity and plight of the many thousands of detained migrants across the world.
'In this book, his collected writings are combined with essays from experts on migration, refugee rights, politics, and literature. Together, they provide a moving, creative, and challenging account of not only one writer's harrowing experience and inspiring resilience, but the wider structures of violence which hold thousands of human beings in a state of misery in migrant camps throughout the western hemisphere and beyond.' (Publication summary)
'In 2004, when she was John Howard’s Immigration minister and I was a reporter for my student newspaper in Adelaide, Amanda Vanstone granted me an interview. Her job was to administer Australia’s policy of locking up people who’d come to Australia by boat to seek protection from persecution. When I observed that remote refugee prisons in places such as Woomera, Port Augusta and Port Hedland did not facilitate access to lawyers and journalists, Vanstone said that was the fault of those professionals for not setting up their practices in those places. When I pressed my point, Vanstone became annoyed. “Listen. Yatala’s not remote. We don’t allow a lot of media there!”' (Introduction)
'In 2018, No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison became a literary sensation. It was written by Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee who was incarcerated by the Australian government on Manus Island. Like thousands of others, Boochani had travelled by boat to seek asylum in Australia. From Manus, he texted passages to collaborators in Sydney. There, Omid Tofighian and Moones Mansoubi developed the work further. Through reportage, storytelling and poetry, it bore witness to the horrors of immigration detention. By 2019, No Friend had won some of Australia’s major literary awards and Boochani had become internationally renowned. In November 2019, he was invited to attend a festival in Christchurch, New Zealand. After six years in detention, he was free. The system that had imprisoned him remained intact.' (Introduction)
'The author's own writings are combined with essays from experts on migration, refugee rights, politics and literature.'
'Eighty years apart, a private diary from the Tatura internment camp and dispatches from the Manus detention centre recount the experiences of refugees held prisoner by Australia'
'In 2018, No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison became a literary sensation. It was written by Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee who was incarcerated by the Australian government on Manus Island. Like thousands of others, Boochani had travelled by boat to seek asylum in Australia. From Manus, he texted passages to collaborators in Sydney. There, Omid Tofighian and Moones Mansoubi developed the work further. Through reportage, storytelling and poetry, it bore witness to the horrors of immigration detention. By 2019, No Friend had won some of Australia’s major literary awards and Boochani had become internationally renowned. In November 2019, he was invited to attend a festival in Christchurch, New Zealand. After six years in detention, he was free. The system that had imprisoned him remained intact.' (Introduction)
'In 2004, when she was John Howard’s Immigration minister and I was a reporter for my student newspaper in Adelaide, Amanda Vanstone granted me an interview. Her job was to administer Australia’s policy of locking up people who’d come to Australia by boat to seek protection from persecution. When I observed that remote refugee prisons in places such as Woomera, Port Augusta and Port Hedland did not facilitate access to lawyers and journalists, Vanstone said that was the fault of those professionals for not setting up their practices in those places. When I pressed my point, Vanstone became annoyed. “Listen. Yatala’s not remote. We don’t allow a lot of media there!”' (Introduction)
'Eighty years apart, a private diary from the Tatura internment camp and dispatches from the Manus detention centre recount the experiences of refugees held prisoner by Australia'
'The author's own writings are combined with essays from experts on migration, refugee rights, politics and literature.'
