No Friend but the Mountains
Writing from Manus Prison

Begin mandatory reading. End mandatory detention.......more

For three days I have been locked inside a hell that I can still barely fathom, one that I experienced on the page, but that Behrouz Boochani and his fellow prisoners on Manus Island have lived for over five years. What's worse was the knowledge that we have all been made accomplice to their sufferi......more

Richard Flanagan supplied a forward to this personal account of the contentious failure in off-shore processing and detention of asylum seekers. It says it all: “Reading this book is difficult for any Australian. We pride ourselves on decency, kindness, generosity and a fair go. None of these qualiti......more

UPDATE JULY 2020 Boochani has just been given formal refugee status in New Zealand and granted a visa to live there! 5★ “My mother always sighed and would say: ‘My boy, you came into this world in a time we called the flee and flight years.’” In his poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, Alfred Lord......more

This is not a well-written book on any measure I can think of. As memoir, it reads like an adolescent’s diary, with all the expected melodrama and awkward word play. As journalism, it fails to provide any context, objectivity, or nuance. As poetry, it made me cringe. Very disappointing because, base......more