No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison
By Behrouz Boochani
Translated by Omid Tofighian
Pan Macmillan 2018
Published in 18 languages in 23 countries
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: Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Literature 2019
WINNER: Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Non-Fiction 2019
WINNER: NSW Premier’s Award 2019
WINNER: ABIA General Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2019
WINNER: National Biography Award 2019
WINNER: Behrouz Boochani Award for Services to Anthropology
FINALIST: Terzani Prize 2020
LONGLISTED: Colin Roderick Literary Award 2019
Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani
By Behrouz Boochani
Translated and edited by Moones Mansoubi and Omid Tofighian
Bloomsbury 2022
In the articles, essays, and poems he wrote while detained illegally on Manus Island, Behrouz Boochani 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.