Book sent by text message wins major award

An asylum seeker who has been detained by Australia on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island for years has won Australia’s richest literary prize with a book that was submitted to its publisher via text message.

Journalist Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian Kurd, wrote No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison and sent the manuscript piece by piece to translator Omid Tofighian.

Boochani’s book was chosen to receive the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature, worth A$100,000 (£55,000), as well as the Prize for Non-Fiction at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, worth A$25,000 (£13,750).

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“In some ways I am very happy because we are able to get attention to this plight and you know many people have become aware of this situation, which is great,” Boochani told the BBC.

“But on the other side I feel that I don't have the right to have celebration - because I have many friends here who are suffering in this place.”

Boochani was detained on Manus Island in 2013 for attempting to enter Australia without a valid visa.

Australian law dictates that any undocumented person arriving in Australia by sea will be processed at an offshore detention facility.

CNN reports that there are still “600 refugees who remain in camps on the island despite Australia having closed its ‘regional processing centre’ there in 2017”.