No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison

Description

'Our government jailed his body, but his soul remained that of a free man.' Richard Flanagan In 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally and indefinitely detained on Manus Island. This book is the result. Written on a smuggled mobile phone and translated from Farsi, it is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through six years of incarceration and exile that - against all the odds - became an award-winning national bestseller. WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY PRIZE FOR LITERATURE, AND THE PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019 WINNER OF THE NSW PREMIER'S AWARD 2019 WINNER OF THE ABIA GENERAL NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2019 INAUGURAL WINNER OF THE BEHROUZ BOOCHANI AWARD FOR SERVICES TO ANTHROPOLOGY FINALIST FOR THE TERZANI PRIZE 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE COLIN RODERICK LITERARY AWARD 2019 PRAISE FOR NO FRIEND BUT THE MOUNTAINS 'Bears lucid, poetic and devastating witness to the insane barbarity enacted in our name.' Michelle de Kretser 'A poetic, yet harrowing read, and every Australian household should have a copy.' Maxine Beneba Clarke 'A powerful account ... made me feel ashamed and outraged. Behrouz's writing is lyrical and poetic, though the horrors he describes are unspeakable.' Sofie Laguna 'A shattering book every Australian should read.' Benjamin Law 'A magnificent writer. To understand the true nature of what it is that we have done, every Australian, beginning with the prime minister, should read Behrouz Boochani's intense, lyrical and psychologically perceptive prose-poetry masterpiece.' The Age 'An essential historical document.' The Australian

Associate Professor Behrouz Boochani graduated from Tarbiat Moallem University and Tarbiat Modares University, both in Tehran; he holds a Masters degree in political science, political geography and geopolitics. He is a Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate and filmmaker. Boochani was a writer for the Kurdish language magazine Werya; is Associate Professor in Social Sciences at UNSW; non-resident Visiting Scholar at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre (SAPMiC), University of Sydney; Honorary Member of PEN International; and winner of an Amnesty International Australia 2017 Media Award, the Diaspora Symposium Social Justice Award, the Liberty Victoria 2018 Empty Chair Award, and the Anna Politkovskaya award for journalism. He publishes regularly with The Guardian, and his writing also features in The Saturday Paper, Huffington Post, New Matilda, The Financial Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. Boochani is also co-director (with Arash Kamali Sarvestani) of the 2017 feature-length film Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time; and collaborator on Nazanin Sahamizadeh's play Manus. His book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature in addition to the Nonfiction category. He has also won the Special Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the Australian Book Industry Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year, and the National Biography Prize. He has been appointed adjunct associate professor in the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of NSW and visiting professor at Birkbeck Law School at the University of London. He was a political prisoner incarcerated by the Australian government in Papua New Guinea for almost seven years. In November 2019 Behrouz escaped to New Zealand. He now resides in Christchurch. Translator Dr Omid Tofighian is a lecturer, researcher and community advocate based at the American University of Cairo and University of Sydney. His work combines philosophy with interests in rhetoric, religion, popular culture, transnationalism, displacement and discrimination. He contributes to community arts and cultural projects and works with asylum seekers, refugees and young people from Western Sydney. He has published numerous book chapters and journal articles and is author of Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues (Palgrave 2016). He has translated a number of articles for Behrouz Boochani for the Guardian.