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An Iran-Kurdish journalist arrested on the island of Manus (Papua New Guinea) won the first Australian literary prize. Behrouz Boochani, a refugee who has sought asylum in Australia, has been in the country for almost six years and sends people in his case. On Thursday, he was surprised to learn that he had won the Victorian Literature Award for $ 100,000 (63,000 euros).
He had already received the $ 25,000 prize for non-fiction ($ 25,000). 15,8 thousand euros) in the same competition. The award-winning book of the two awards reads "No friend, but the mountain: write from Manus prison". This was written via SMS – a message to be sent painstakingly to his publisher, Picador Australia, from the detention center where Boochani was.
Since then, he has been transferred to other premises of the island. But the jury that awarded the award called the book "an act of survival," "a cry of resistance," and "a vivid portrait of five years of imprisonment and exile," adding that "it is in fact a detailed critical study of what Boochani calls" the Manus Prison Theory "."
Since Boochani was unable to travel to Australia, the prize had been received in his name by the one who translated it into Farsi. Omid Tofighian said: "It is one of the most vicious forms of neocolonial oppression in the world at the present time." Recognize it and draw attention to the narrative that it presents will impact on many generations. "
For his part, Boochani, speaking to the British daily The Guardian, he expressed the feelings that he describes as paradoxical: "I do not really know what to say, I certainly have not written this book Just to win a prize, my main goal was to make sure that people in Australia and around the world understood that this system had been torturing innocent people on the island of Manus for almost six years. "
" I hope the prize will pay more attention to our situation, create a change and put an end to this barbaric policy. "
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