AustLit

The great achievement of this book is that the people are real, not figments of media construction, and we get to care about them, and worry for them. Australia has in recent years implemented harsh measures on refugees and asylum seekers, changing laws retrospectively and where necessary, to make anti-asylum seeker policy legal. These measures have been as popular as they have been misrepresented and misunderstood. This book gives an extraordinary and important insight into the secret daily life behind the wire of detention centres.

'Told through the bright and unflinching eyes of Cat Thao, a girl born in a refugee camp, We Are Here is a memoir that begins in 1975 with her family's gripping exodus by foot out of post-war Vietnam - a dangerous journey, unimaginable to most, on which most perished.

'The escape of Cat Thao's family from persecution traverses the horrific jungles of Khmer Rouge Cambodia and into the crowded refugee camps of Thailand. From which, finally, the Nguyens were allowed to board a Qantas plane to a freedom they wanted desperately.

True story of author's life as an officer in an Australian detention centre.

'David Nyuol Vincent was a little boy when he fled southern Sudan with his father, as war raged in their country. He left behind his distraught mother and sisters, his village and his childhood.

'For months David and his father walked across southern Sudan, barefoot, desperately searching for safety, food and water. They survived the perilous Sahara Desert crossing into Ethiopia only to be separated. David was taken in and trained as a child soldier, surviving the next 17 years of his life alone in refugee camps.

Biography of an Iranian family fleeing religious and political persecution who were detained in the Woomera Detention Centre.

'Is the life of a child worth the price of freedom? To escape religious persecution in Iran, Zahra and Saeed Badraie made the heart-breaking decision to leave their home behind and find a better life for their family elsewhere. The agent they approached to help them flee told the Badraies that there was only one place the people smugglers could take them: Australia, a far away country, but a generous one that would give them refuge.

The story of a refugee's arrival in Australia by boat.

' A remarkably warm-hearted, uplifting and inspiring story of one boy's survival against the odds.

'Abdi's world fell apart when he was only fifteen and Somalia's vicious civil war hit Mogadishu. Unable to find his family and effectively an orphan, he fled with some sixty others,heading to Kenya. On the way, death squads hunted them and they daily faced violence, danger and starvation. After almost four months, they arrived in at refugee camps in Kenya - of the group he'd set out with, only five had survived.

'Surviving Year Zero is the story of one young man, yet it is the story of millions of people. It tells of how Sovannora Ieng lived through the genocide that tore at the heart of Cambodia in the 1970s.

Sovannora survived in an environment where survival was barely possible. He and his family experienced starvation, backbreaking labour and constant surveillance. They learnt to be silent in a world where a casual remark could be turned into a sentence of death.

Sovannora’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge remind us of the terrible things that we humans have done to each other, and his eventual escape to Australia is a testament to his resilience and ingenuity in the face of constant danger.