'Feeling the facts': literary journalism, colonialism and Behrouz Boochani's No Friend but the Mountains

Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains is a prize-winning work of literary journalism operating as collective protest. A major theme of Boochani’s book is the colonialism that has pervaded Australian government policy in relation to refugees and asylum seekers arriving by Indonesian fishing boats in Australia’s northern waters.

After their crafts were intercepted by the Australian Navy, single men were detained on Manus Island in Papua/New Guinea. As Boochani demonstrates, colonialist attitudes underpinned the Manus Island detention centre, exemplified by the three-tiered system - involving Australian prison officers, the local Papu prison workers, and the prisoners - that kept the prison running.

This chapter analyses the theme of colonialism in Boochani’s work, while considering the book’s literary journalism features. In the process, it aims to discuss the usefulness of literary journalism as a genre for conveying the experience of imprisonment to readers, as well as its potential to encourage socially just reform.