House of Anansi Press has acquired North American rights to No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, the extraordinary first-hand account of Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani’s detainment on Manus Island, to be published simultaneously in Canada and the U.S. on July 2, 2019.

No Friend but the Mountains is an autobiographical account of Boochani’s 2013 illegal detainment in a refugee detention centre off the coast of Papua New Guinea by the Australian government. Originally written in Farsi through WhatsApp messages sent to the translator, Omid Tofighian, No Friend but the Mountains represents the harrowing experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world.

“This is a very important book on a very important subject,” says Janie Yoon, Associate Publisher at Anansi. “Not only is it a beautiful and astounding work of literature, but the ongoing injustice Behrouz Boochani describes is representative of the experiences of too many men, women, and children in the world today.”

First published in July 2018 in Australia by Picador Australia, No Friend but the Mountains was recently awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, where the judges’ report praised the book as “a literary triumph, devastating and transcendent.” The foreword, written by Man Booker Prize-winning author Richard Flanagan, refers to Boochani as “[a] great Australian writer.”

Blending prose, poetry, and critical analysis, No Friend but the Mountains is a stunning and vivid portrait through five years of incarceration, exile, and resistance.

The ebook is now available for purchase at https://houseofanansi.com/products/no-friend-but-the-mountains-1.

BEHROUZ BOOCHANI is a Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate, and filmmaker. Boochani is an Honorary Member of PEN International, the winner of several journalism awards, and is non-resident Visiting Scholar at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre (SAPMiC), University of Sydney. He publishes regularly with the Guardian, and his writing also features in the Saturday Paper, Huffington Post, the New Matilda, the Financial Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

OMID TOFIGHIAN is a translator, lecturer, researcher, and community advocate, combining philosophy with interested in citizen media, rhetoric, religion, popular culture, transnationalism, displacement, and discrimination.

For further information contact Cindy Ma, Senior Publicist, House of Anansi Press at cindy@anansi.ca or 416-363-4343 x 250