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Behrouz Boochani Behrouz Boochani i(9688668 works by)
Gender: Male
Heritage: Kurdish
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BiographyHistory

Behrouz Boochani was a journalist, writer and human rights defender who in 2016, was incarcerated in Australia's Manus Island immigration detention center. He was one of the founders of a Kurdish language magazine, Werya.

Boochani won the Anna Politkovskaya investigative journalism award for his work documenting Australia’s offshore immigration detention program.

Boochani was officially granted refugee status by the New Zealand government on 23 July 2020, his 37th birthday and exactly seven years to the day after his arrival in Australia in 2013.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Freedom, Only Freedom : The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani London : Bloomsbury , 2022 25093877 2022 selected work essay

'Over six years of imprisonment on Australia's offshore migrant detention centre, the Kurdish Iranian journalist and writer Behrouz Boochani bore personal witness to the suffering and degradation inflicted on him and his fellow refugees, culminating eventually in his prize-winning book - No Friend but the Mountains - which was painstakingly typed out in text messages while he was incarcerated.

'In the articles, essays, and poems he wrote while detained, he 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.'  (Publication summary)

2023 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Social Impact Book of the Year
y separately published work icon No Friend but the Mountains : Writing From Manus Prison No Friend but the Mountains : The True Story of an Illegally Imprisoned Refugee Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2018 14342605 2018 selected work prose

'Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the land of mountains...

'Since 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani has been held in the Manus Island offshore processing centre.

'People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests...

'This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through five years of incarceration and exile.

'Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains? '  (Publication summary)

2019 winner Foreword Reviews : INDIES Editor's Choice Prize Nonfiction
2019 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Special Award
2019 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Award for Non-Fiction
2019 longlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
2019 longlisted Colin Roderick Award
2019 winner National Biography Award
2019 winner Mascara Avant-garde Awards Non-Fiction
2019 winner Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
2019 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Victorian Prize for Literature
Last amended 24 Jul 2020 12:01:09
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