No Friend But the Mountains

Last updated
No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison
Boochani No Friend But the Mountains cover 2018.jpg
Author Behrouz Boochani
Translator Omid Tofighian
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
Genre Biography
Publisher Picador Australia
Publication date
2018
Media typePrint paperback
Pagesxxxiv, 374
Award Victorian Prize for Literature
Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction
ISBN 978-1-760-55538-2
OCLC 1031466787
Foreword by Richard Flanagan; also includes 24-page translator's note.

No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison is an autobiographical account of Behrouz Boochani's perilous journey to Christmas Island and his subsequent incarceration in an Australian government immigration detention facility on Manus Island.

Contents

Background

The book was written on a mobile phone using WhatsApp [1] and smuggled out of Manus Island as thousands of PDF files. It was translated from Persian into English by Omid Tofighian, [1] Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney's Philosophy Department. It was published by Picador in late 2018.

In his foreword to the work, Australian writer Richard Flanagan refers to Boochani as "a great Australian writer", [2] who has written not only a "strange and terrible book", but an "account [that] demands a reckoning" for the cruelty to and deliberate destruction of hope of the detainees. [3] Flanagan opens his foreword with: "No Friend but the Mountains is a book that can rightly take its place on the shelf of world prison literature, alongside such diverse works as Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks , Ray Parkin's Into the Smother, Wole Soyinka's The Man Dies, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail ". [4]

Translator Tofighian writes in his translator's preface: "Both a profound creative writing project and a strategic act of resistance, the book is part of a coherent theoretical project and critical approach". [5]

Synopsis and themes

Written in prose and poetry, it chronicles Boochani's boat journey from Indonesia to Christmas Island in 2013 and his subsequent detainment on Manus Island, describing the lives (and deaths) of other detainees, the daily routines and various incidents, and reflecting on the system in which they are trapped, up to the point of the prison riots in early 2014. He also makes observations on the Australian guards and the local Papuan people. He characterises individuals about whom he writes using epithets rather than using their real names, with a few important exceptions such as his friend Reza Barati, also known as The Gentle Giant.

Boochani posits that the prison is a Kyriarchal system (a term borrowed from feminist theory), one where different forms of oppression intersect; oppression is not random but purposeful, designed to isolate and create friction amongst prisoners, leading to despair and broken spirits. [6]

In a lengthy afterword by Ofighian, he presents and explores in some detail aspects of the "philosophical ideas, arguments and collaborative interpretations developed by the author and translator", referring to Australia's "border-industrial complex", which is only the beginning of a multi-faceted project called Manus Prison Theory. He believes that the outline of themes is important because it is inspired by Boochani's "research training, intellectual work and vision". The theory hypothesises that the prison as an ideology "hinders or eliminates opportunities to know...both about the violent atrocities and about the unique lived experiences of the prisoners". Boochani is sure that the general public have no idea about the horrors of systematic torture which is integral to the system, and his primary aim is "to expose and communicate this very fact". [7]

Translation process

Tofighian describes in an article in The Conversation the process and the challenges brought about by translating such a work. Starting in December 2016, Boochani's words were first sent to consultant translator Moones Mansoubi, each chapter being one long text message of 9,000 to 17,000 words. Mansoubi would format them into PDFs, and send them to Tofighian, who then translated from Persian to English, consulting regularly with Boochani via WhatsApp along the way. Tofighian had weekly sessions with either Mansoubi or another Iranian researcher in Sydney, during which time Boochani continued to write the book while consulting his friends and literary confidants both in Australia and Iran. [8]

Tofighian had already translated a number of Boochani's articles before he travelled to Manus to meet Boochani, which was soon after the death of another detainee, musician Hamed Shamshiripour, in 2017. When they meet, they discuss nuances, changes, meanings, and also explore ideas and theories outside of the immediate text, Tofighian describing the method as requiring literary experimentation and the process as "a form of shared philosophical activity". [8]

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

Boochani: "I love the book more than anything else I've produced from Manus. The collaboration was fantastic—I enjoyed it immensely. A deep learning experience ... a sweet victory."

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

The book was recognised by five prominent Australian authors in The Age as one of the best books of 2018. Robert Manne called it "almost certainly the most important Australian book published in 2018", and authors Sofie Laguna, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Michelle de Kretser and Dennis Altman all sang its praises. [10] Louis Klee wrote in the Times Literary Supplement , "In a decade of Australian politics defined by the leadership spill—a spilt decade, in which any meaningful progress on the issues that define Australia, be it Indigenous affairs, refugee politics, or climate change, effectively stalled—Boochani's witnessing has elevated him to a paradoxical position. Today he may well be the most significant political voice in a country he has never visited". [11]

It won Australia's richest literary prize, the Victorian Prize for Literature, as well as the Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction, awarded by the Wheeler Centre on 31 January 2019. [1] [12] There were questions about Boochani's eligibility for both prizes because entrants had been previously limited to Australian citizens or permanent residents, but he was given an exemption by prize administrators and the judges were unanimous in recognising its literary excellence. Wheeler Centre director Michael Williams said that the judges thought that the story of what's happening on Manus Island essentially is an Australian story, and that "made it completely consistent with the intention of the awards". [13]

Boochani, giving an acceptance speech for the award via video, said that this award "is a victory. It is a victory not only for us but for literature and art and above all it is victory for humanity. It is a victory against the system that has reduced us to numbers". [14] In an interview with the writer Arnold Zable following the award, Boochani said that he has many conflicting thoughts on it, but he sees it as a "political statement from the literary and creative arts community in Australia, and all those who do not agree with the government's thinking". [15]

In April 2019 the book was given a Special Award in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, [16] whose judges called it "an outstanding work of literature in its own right", apart from being "remarkable for the circumstances of its production ... [and] ... compelling and shocking content". [17]

On 2 May 2019, it was announced that the work had won the Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) for General non-fiction book of the year. [18] On 12 August 2019, the book won the Australian National Biography Award. [19] In May 2020 it won ABIA Audiobook of the year. [20]

Publication in Iran

The Persian translation of No Friend But the Mountains was published in early 2020 by Cheshmeh Publications in Tehran. In April 2020 also the audio version of the book (narrated by the actor Navid Mohammadzadeh) was released in Iran with the permission of Boochani. [21]

Film

In February 2020 it was announced that the book would be adapted to a feature film. A joint production between Hoodlum Entertainment, Sweetshop & Green and Aurora Films, production is slated to commence mid-2021. [22] It is planned to do most of the shooting in Australia. [23] [24] Writer and producer Ákos Armont and producer Antony Waddington put forward the idea of an adaptation. Boochani said the new film should incorporate some of his previous work, and that of his fellow asylum seekers, as a part of Australian history. [25]

Symphonic work

No Friend But The Mountains: A Symphonic Song Cycle was created by composer Luke Styles and performed live on 21 March 2021 at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl by bass-baritone singer Adrian Tamburini, the Zelman Symphony , and the Melbourne Bach Choir, conducted by Rick Prakhoff. The performance of the song cycle was preceded by Boochani's friend and former Manus inmate Farhad Bandesh singing his own song "The Big Exhale". Hosted by Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Rafael Epstein, [26] the event was broadcast on ABC Television in June 2021 and made available on ABC iview. It also includes interviews with Boochani, Tofighian, and others. [27] [28]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Flanagan</span> Australian novelist

Richard Miller Flanagan is an Australian writer, who has also worked as a film director and screenwriter. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Booker Prize</span> International literary award

The International Booker Prize is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize was announced in June 2004. Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation. It rewarded one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage", and was a recognition of the writer's body of work rather than any one title.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Scott</span> Indigenous Australian novelist

Kim Scott is an Australian novelist of Aboriginal Australian ancestry. He is a descendant of the Noongar people of Western Australia.

The Zelman Memorial Symphony Orchestra is the longest-running community orchestra in Melbourne, Australia.

<i>Australian Book Review</i> Literary magazine

Australian Book Review is an Australian arts and literary review. Created in 1961, ABR is an independent non-profit organisation that publishes articles, reviews, commentaries, essays, and new writing. The aims of the magazine are 'to foster high critical standards, to provide an outlet for fine new writing, and to contribute to the preservation of literary values and a full appreciation of Australia's literary heritage'.

The National Biography Award, established in Australia in 1996, is awarded for the best published work of biographical or autobiographical writing by an Australian. It aims "to encourage the highest standards of writing biography and autobiography and to promote public interest in those genres". It was initially awarded every two years, but from 2002 it has been awarded annually. Its administration was taken over by the State Library of New South Wales in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manus friarbird</span> Species of bird

The Manus friarbird or white-naped friarbird, also known as the chauka is a species of bird in the Honeyeater family, or Meliphagidae. It is endemic to the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea.

The Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction, formerly known as the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction, is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award. As of 2011 it has a remuneration of A$25,000. The winner of this category prize vies with 4 other category winners for overall Victorian Prize for Literature valued at an additional A$100,000.

In feminist theory, kyriarchy is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, economic injustice, prison-industrial complex, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, speciesism, and other forms of dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalized and institutionalized.

Reza Barati was a 23-year-old asylum seeker who was killed during rioting at the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (MIRPC), Papua New Guinea, on 17 February 2014. An Iranian Kurd, he had arrived in Australia on 24 July 2013 – just five days after the PNG solution was announced – and was sent to Manus Island in August.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manus Regional Processing Centre</span> An offshore Australian immigration detention facility

The Manus Regional Processing Centre, or Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (MIRCP), was one of a number of offshore Australian immigration detention facilities. The centre was located on the PNG Navy Base Lombrum on Los Negros Island in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Behrouz Boochani</span> Kurdish-Iranian writer, filmmaker, and asylum seeker

Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer living in New Zealand. He was held in the Australian-run Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea from 2013 until its closure in 2017. He remained on the island before being moved to Port Moresby along with the other detainees around September 2019. On 14 November 2019 he arrived in Christchurch on a one-month visa, to speak at a special event organised by WORD Christchurch on 29 November, as well as other speaking events. In December 2019, his one month visa to New Zealand expired and he remained on an expired visa until being granted refugee status in July 2020, at which time he became a Senior Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury.

<i>Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time</i> 2017 film by Behrouz Boochani

Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time is a documentary film co-directed by Kurdish-Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani and Netherlands-based Iranian filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani released in 2017. It was shot by Boochani from inside Australia's Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea. The whole film was shot over six months on a smartphone, which had to be kept secret from the prison authorities.

The Sydney Review of Books is an online literary magazine established in 2013.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2019.

Omid Tofighian is an Iranian-Australian philosopher and Honorary Research Associate at the University of Sydney. He is known for his research on ancient Greek philosophy and his translation of the award-winning book by Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountains from Persian into English.

The Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) are publishers' and literary awards held by the Australian Publishers Association annually in Sydney "to celebrate the achievements of authors and publishers in bringing Australian books to readers". Works are first selected by an academy of more than 200 industry professionals, and then a shortlist and winners are chosen by judging panels.

WORD Christchurch is an organisation which presents a variety of literary events, most notably the annual WORD Christchurch Festival, also known as WORD Festival, established in 1997. Until 2014 the festival was run as the Press Christchurch Writers Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angus McDonald (artist)</span> Australian artist and filmmaker

Angus McDonald is an Australian contemporary visual artist, refugee advocate, columnist, and documentary filmmaker.

Hoda Afshar is an Iranian documentary photographer who is based in Melbourne. She is known for her 2018 prize-winning portrait of Kurdish-Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, who suffered a long imprisonment in the Manus Island detention centre run by the Australian Government. Her work has been featured in many exhibitions and is held in many permanent collections across Australia.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Ponniah, Kevin (31 January 2019). "Behrouz Boochani: Refugee who wrote book using WhatsApp wins top prize". BBC News. Archived from the original on 1 February 2019. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  2. ↑ Allahyari, Keyvan; Rae, Paul (1 February 2019). "Behrouz Boochani's literary prize cements his status as an Australian writer". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 2 February 2019. Retrieved 2 February 2019.
  3. ↑ Flanagan, Richard (October 2018). Foreword. No friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison. By Boochani, Behrouz. Translated by Tofighian, Omid. Picador Australia. ISBN   9781760555382.
  4. ↑ Flanagan, Richard (11 February 2019). Foreword. No friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison. By Boochani, Behrouz. Translated by Tofighian, Omid (1st Canadian EPUB ed.). House of Anansi Press. ISBN   9781487006846 . Retrieved 11 September 2020.
  5. ↑ "No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison". Pan MacMillan Australia. Archived from the original on 7 February 2019. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  6. ↑ Manne, Robert (10 August 2018). "No Friend But The Mountains review: Behrouz Boochani's poetic and vital memoir". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 30 October 2018. Retrieved 2 February 2019.
  7. ↑ 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.
  8. 1 2 3 Tofighian, Omid (16 August 2018). "Truth to power: my time translating Behrouz Boochani's masterpiece". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 5 November 2018. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  9. ↑ 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)
  10. ↑ "Best Books of 2018". The Age. 7 December 2018. Retrieved 8 December 2018.
  11. ↑ Klee, Louis (28 June 2019). "Cannibal island" . Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  12. ↑ "Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2019". The Wheeler Centre. Retrieved 2019-01-31.
  13. ↑ Young, Evan (1 February 2019). "How a man detained on Manus Island won Australia's richest literary prize". SBS News. Archived from the original on 1 February 2019.
  14. ↑ "'A victory for humanity': Behrouz Boochani's literary prize speech in full – video". The Guardian. 1 February 2019. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  15. ↑ Zable, Arnold (2 February 2019). "'We are part of Australian history': Behrouz Boochani, voice of exile". The Age. Archived from the original on 1 February 2019. Retrieved 4 February 2019.
  16. ↑ Jefferson, Dee (29 Apr 2019). "History of Aboriginal archaeology wins Book of the Year at NSW Premier's Literary Awards". ABC Arts. Australian Broadcasting Corporation News. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
  17. ↑ "2019 Special Award". State Library of NSW. 2019-04-24. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  18. ↑ Spring, Alexandra (2 May 2019). "'Extraordinary and beautiful storytelling': Boy Swallows Universe wins ABIA book of the year". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 6 May 2019.
  19. ↑ "'Impassioned letter' from Manus Island wins 2019 National Biography Award". State Library of NSW. 2019-08-12. Retrieved 2019-08-12.
  20. ↑ "'Bluey: The Beach' wins 2020 ABIA Book of the Year". Books+Publishing. 2020-05-13. Retrieved 2020-05-14.
  21. ↑ "Publication of Behrouz Bouchani's book in Iran". BBC Persian Service. 2020-04-23. Retrieved 2020-12-09.
  22. ↑ "Film of Boochani's novel in the works". Blue Mountains Gazette. 2020-02-23. Retrieved 2020-02-23.
  23. ↑ "Film based on Behrouz Boochani's story in the works". SBS News. 23 February 2020. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  24. ↑ 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.
  25. ↑ Zhou, Naaman (24 February 2020). "Behrouz Boochani's book, No Friend But The Mountains, to be made into a film". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  26. ↑ "Music Review: No Friend But The Mountains: a Symphonic Song Cycle". ArtsHub Australia. 26 March 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  27. ↑ "ABC TV BROADCAST: No Friend But the Mountains - A Voyage Through Song". Wise Music Classical. 26 April 2022. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  28. ↑ No Friend But The Mountains: A Symphonic Song Cycle at IMDb

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.