No Friend but the Mountains: The True Story of an Illegally Imprisoned Refugee

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Horrified mothers ... mothers wrapped their children within the instincts of motherhood and escaped to the mountains. Young girls were searching for their dreams within the hearts of men rounded up into groups – so many groups – and being led down a road to the front lines of war. Groups – so many groups – returned as corpses. Again, it is those same chestnuts that became the solace for buried dreams.

Any review here is bound to be totally inadequate. How do you put a star rating on someone’s suffering? All I can do is try to give potential readers a general idea of what to expect from this book.

No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison

Boochani, Behrouz (2018). No friend but the mountains: Writing from Manus Prison. Afterword by translator Omid Ofighian. Sydney: Picador (Pan MacMillan Australia). pp.359–362. ISBN 978-1-760-55538-2. As Judith Matloff shows, the result is a combustible mix we in the lowlands cannot afford to ignore. Traveling to conflict zones across the world, she introduces us to Albanian teenagers involved in ancient blood feuds; Mexican peasants hunting down violent poppy growers; and Jihadists who have resisted the Russian military for decades. At every stop, Matloff reminds us that the drugs, terrorism, and instability cascading down the mountainside affect us all. Tofighian: "In my opinion, it's the most important thing I’ve ever been involved in. It’s had a profound impact on me, and I've learned a lot from you.... It has such remarkable literary, philosophical and cultural dimensions to it." [9] Reception [ edit ] Giving this book a ‘star rating’ seems almost embarrassing — how can you judge the literary worth of someone’s cruel prison treatment which is unfolding in real time? Of course, we now know that didn’t stop the judges of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards — who just today gave ‘No Friend But the Mountains’ their top prize. Australia will give Boochani a prize for this book, but seemed to do everything to stop him writing it.

We come to know Boochani not through his whole life narrative but from the way he survives, his observations of others, and his analysis of the psychological and power structures underpinning the place he calls Manus Prison. All that he has experienced and learnt in his life comes to bear on this book. ABC TV BROADCAST: No Friend But the Mountains - A Voyage Through Song". Wise Music Classical. 26 April 2022 . Retrieved 10 July 2022. This is a captivating book, beautifully written and logically put together. It wasn't an easy read but it was very interesting and informative, educational, important. Germian, Roza; Theodosiou, Peter (28 February 2020). " 'I never said I want to go to Australia': Behrouz Boochani rejects Peter Dutton barring him from the country". SBS Kurdish . Retrieved 1 March 2020.He immerses the reader in Manus' everyday horrors: the boredom, frustration, violence, obsession and hunger; the petty bureaucratic bullying and the wholesale nastiness; the tragedies and the soul-destroying hopelessness. Its creation was an almost unimaginable task... will lodge deep in the brain of anyone who reads it.' Herald Sun Boochani, Behrouz; Tofighian, Omid (2018). "The Last Days in Manus Prison" (Summer 2018). Meanjin Quarterly. Archived from the original on 9 March 2019 . Retrieved 23 February 2019. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help) The structural differences are between the two languages pose one of many challenges of translation. The author uses philosophical and psychoanalytic methodology to examine the political commentary and historical account, and Kurdish, Persian and Manusian myth and folklore support the narrative. Tofighian calls the style "horrific surrealism". [8] Author and translator comments [ edit ] Boochani’s book is a contribution to the Kurdish literary tradition and Kurdish resistance. Interpretations need to be situated within the styles and structures that have characterized Kurdish creativity for centuries, collective memories of historical injustice and Kurdish political history, and their relational concepts of being and becoming that are connected to the land.