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A review by 4ndysmith
No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani
5.0
It was a difficult to reflect on this book and attempt to assign it a rating out of five stars. I felt it would take a special sort of cognitive dissonance to give it a star rating after having just read about a real, absolutely horrendous experience - and not an experience that happened years ago - but something that happened over the course of just the last five years. And yet, it was such a poetically, well-written book. This made me struggle to fit what I read into a well-known category.
Then I read this excerpt from the Translators Reflections:
”Rather than categorise his writing as 'refugee narrative' or 'refugee memoir, the book is better situated in other traditions: clandestine
philosophical literature, prison narratives, philosophical fiction, Australian dissident writing, Iranian political art, transnational literature, decolonial writing and the Kurdish literary tradition.”
And so, as such, I have no doubt this deserves a 5-star rating, but really, a 5-out-of-5 rating for a book like this seems rather vapid. This book really just deserves to be read, to be a catalyst for change, and then to be a part of history along with the events described.
Then I read this excerpt from the Translators Reflections:
”Rather than categorise his writing as 'refugee narrative' or 'refugee memoir, the book is better situated in other traditions: clandestine
philosophical literature, prison narratives, philosophical fiction, Australian dissident writing, Iranian political art, transnational literature, decolonial writing and the Kurdish literary tradition.”
And so, as such, I have no doubt this deserves a 5-star rating, but really, a 5-out-of-5 rating for a book like this seems rather vapid. This book really just deserves to be read, to be a catalyst for change, and then to be a part of history along with the events described.