RaveLos Angeles Review of Books... an extraordinary insight into the life of several hundred men held in offshore prisons under the Australian policy of immigration detention ... [Boochani\'s] writing was smuggled out via text message over a period of several years, collated by his interpreter Moones Mansoubi, and translated into English by Omid Tofighian. The result is a lyrical but also suffocating evocation of aimless days under the baking sun, dehumanizing queues, essential and often absurd acts of resistance, banal abuse, and extreme violence ... No Friend but the Mountains allows us to rethink the violence of these offshore sites as integral, not alien, to Australian society ... While its author remains officially unwelcome and unwanted, No Friend but the Mountains won two prestigious prizes at the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. But it deserves, and will have, a much wider readership. As a detailed reading of colonial power, Boochani’s book charts a global landscape of fortified borders, spaces of removal, and policies of dehumanization.
