Behrouz Boochani holds a Masters degree in political
geography and geopolitics. He is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist,
scholar, cultural advocate, writer and filmmaker, founder of the
Kurdish-language magazine Weya, and an Honorary Member of PEN
International. In 2013, he fled Iran and became a political
prisoner of the Australian Government incarcerated in the Manus
Regional Processing Centre (Papua New Guinea).
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 the author of Myth and
Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues (Palgrave, 2016). He has
translated a number of articles for Behrouz Boochani for the
Guardian.
A chant, a cry from the heart, a lament, fuelled by a fierce
urgency, written with the lyricism of a poet, the literary skills
of a novelist, and the profound insights of an astute observer of
human behaviour and the ruthless politics of a cruel and unjust
imprisonment.
*Arnold Zable, author of the award-winning Jewels and Ashes
and Cafe Scheherazade*
The systems of containment and control that the rich world applies
to many thousands of migrants and refugees work by reducing people
to a faceless presence to either be feared or pitied, but never
listened to. In the face of this oppression, Behrouz Boochani's
lyrical yet unsparing account is a vital act of resistance, and a
unique examination of people pushed to life's extremes.
*Daniel Trilling, author of Lights in the Distance*
Not for the faint-hearted, it's a powerful, devastating insight
into a situation that's so often seen through a political - not
personal - lens.
*GQ*
No Friend but the Mountains, quite apart from the extraordinary
circumstances of its writing, gives us a powerfully vivid account
of the experiences of a refugee: desperation, brutality, suffering,
and all observed with an eye that seems to see everything and told
in a voice that’s equal to the task.
*Phillip Pullman*
This is a brilliant book. No Friend but the Mountains is a book
that can rightly take its place on the shelf of world prison
literature . . . It is a profound victory for a young poet who
showed us all how much words can still matter.
*Richard Flanagan, Booker Prize winning author of The Narrow
Road to the Deep North*
Boochani has created a book that resists classification. It
overlaps with genres such as prison literature, philosophical
fiction, clandestine philosophical literature, prison narratives,
Australian dissident writing, Iranian political art, transnational
literature, decolonial writing and the Kurdish literary
tradition.
*Guardian*
A terrific book, extraordinary not only because of the
near-impossible conditions in which it was written, but because
it’s gripping, raw, honest, brutal and also deeply humane, poetic,
spirited and even at times humorous. It’s a searing indictment of
indefinite detention (something that still exists in the UK) and a
reminder of what happens when we stop seeing migrants as human
beings.
*Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane*
I was weeping within minutes. Bouchani has written a devastating
and visceral account of modern displacement and its indignities. It
is tangible, and sensory, and rooted in the human body--it stings
to turn the page and yet it's impossible to stop. It should be
taught in schools as a powerful and damning account of the most
astonishing collective failure of our age.
*Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee*
Under atrocious conditions [Behrouz Boochani] has managed to write
and publish a record of his experiences (experiences yet to be
concluded), a record that will certainly leave his jailers gnashing
their teeth . . . the absorbing record of a life-transforming
episode whose effects on his inner self the writer is still trying
to plumb.
*J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, New
York Review of Books*
A powerful book of witness that recalls the work of Primo Levi, and
is sustained throughout by a profoundly collaborative and
stunningly imagined translation. It demonstrates in every line how
poetry - and translation - can also generate philosophy. Put it on
every curriculum, now.
*Deborah Smith, Man Booker International Prize winning translator*
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