AustLit

'Frantz Fanon spent much of his life in hospitals, as a worker, writer, and patient. Much of Fanon’s work examined hospitals as institutions of social control, medicalising criminality, and exercising colonial powers. To Fanon, ‘colonialism in its essence was already taking on the aspect of a fertile purveyor for psychiatric hospitals’ –­ creating the social conditions that enabled the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, and in turn, the need for institutions capable of housing and controlling the ‘sick’.' (Introduction)

'December 22. Nothing but ravens in the sky. The winter solstice, my second of the year, is drawing us into the heart of a great mist. Two winters, like two long swimming pools. Not quite interminable, but there is a moment midway when the flags are lost, and there is a panicked intake of breath as the feet try for the bottom but the lungs know they won’t reach. Summer in Melbourne is at its fullest, ripest swell.' (Introduction)

'When we arrive at the house, my parents aren't yet home. We are here as a couple for the first time, Tris and me. Anticipation heavy upon my shoulders.' (Introduction)

'A writer. A great Australian writer', Richard Flanagan writes in the foreword to Behrouz Boochani's No Friend But the Mountains (2018, Picador). In a comment designed to spark public conversation regarding Australia's ethical obligation to the incarcerated immigrants on islands inside and outside our coastline, Flanagan puts into play the tenuous category of the 'Australian writer'. Boochani's incorporation into Australia's literary community, enunciates a paradoxical idea of nationhood, one that is flexible, discursive, and open: all the qualities that our politicians oppose. Leaving aside the probability that the writer may not wish to associate himself with Australia in future, Flanagan hypothesises that the national borders policed by Peter Dutton can be discursively reoriented in light of Boochani's contribution. The irony underlying Flanagan's inclusion of Boochani thereby prompts a review of what constitutes a national literary community.' (From introduction)