Manus Island refugee Behrouz Boochani has won the top prize at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards after organisers made an exception to allow him to enter despite not being an Australian resident or citizen.
His novel — No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison — won the country's most valuable literary award, the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature, as well as claiming $25,000 for first place in the category of non-fiction.
But Boochani was not in attendance at the awards ceremony. The Kurdish-Iranian journalist remains on Manus Island and, has been denied entry into Australia since his detention began in 2013.
Speaking to The Guardian, for which he is a columnist, Boochani described receiving the award from a country that has kept him locked up for the better part of six years as "a paradoxical feeling".
"My main aim has always been for the people in Australia and around the world to understand deeply how this system has tortured innocent people on Manus and Nauru in a systematic way for almost six years," he told Guardian Australia.
"I hope this award will bring more attention to our situation, and create change, and end this barbaric policy."
The Human Rights Law Centre of Australia tweeted their congratulations to Boochani calling his novel "an Australian story that as a nation we cannot be proud of, but it's a story that cannot be ignored".
Typing by mobile phone
Boochani wrote his entire book on his mobile phone and sent it in bits and pieces over years to translator Omid Tofighian via Whatsapp.
Speaking on the ABC's The World program on Thursday night, Mr Tofighian said the book "conveys the systematic torture that's inflicted on refugees in the prisons".
"He blends different techniques together and different genres," Mr Tofighian said.
"I call his style an anti-genre … it essentially re-evaluates and even critiques the kind of conventions associated with his genre."
Mr Tofighian said the award will give Boochani a greater voice in speaking out on behalf of fellow refugees.
"I think that people are going to be taking his philosophical approach, political commentary and his cultural analysis more seriously," he said.
The regional processing centre on Manus Island closed in 2017 but 600 refugees are still living on the island.
Other 2019 literary award winners included Elise Valmorbida for her work of fiction The Madonna of the Mountains, Kate Lilley for her poem Tilt, and Indigenous writer Kim Scott for Taboo.
Kendall Feaver won the award for Drama with The Almighty Sometimes, Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina won the writing for young adults category with Catching Teller Crow and Victoria Hannan's won a prize for her unpublished manuscript Kokomo.
