Detained asylum seeker wins top literary prizes

An Iranian refugee whose debut book was written in a detention centre using WhatsApp has been awarded two Australian awards: the $100,000 (55,000 UK pounds) Victoria Prize for literature, and the $25,000 non-fiction prize at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Journalist Behrouz Boochani wrote No Friend but the Mountains in a series of text messages, which he sent to a friend from prison on the island of Papua New Guinea, where he has been kept for almost six years.
Boochani is not allowed into Australia so his translator, Omid Tofighian, who translated the texts from Farsi into English, accepted the awards on his behalf.
Helen Yendall
From Writer's Forum, #209, p4

Slowly but surely Australia will pay the price for these harsh policies. The whole world will know, and should know, that the 'land of the fair go' is little more than a myth. Australia, particularly under the current government, is revealing itself as a classist, racist, xenophobic, little country with illusions of grandeur from the ancient British Empire, ignorance from the USA, and fantasies about its own egalitarianism.