By Jason Steger
The winner of this year's $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature couldn't be at the awards presentation on Thursday evening. He was unavoidably detained elsewhere - on Manus Island, where he has been incarcerated for more than five years.
Kurdish refugee Behrouz Boochani's poetic memoir, No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (translated by Omid Tofighian), not only won Australia's richest writing prize, but also the $25,000 non-fiction prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, which were presented by the creative industries minister, Martin Foley.
Elise Valmorbida won the fiction prize for her historical novel, The Madonna of the Mountains, and Kate Lilley won the poetry prize for her controversial collection, Tilt, in which she wrote about being sexually abused as a teenager by friends of her mother, the late playwright Dorothy Hewett.
Other winners were: drama, Kendall Feaver, The Almighty Sometimes; writing for young adults, Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina, Catching Teller Crow; Indigenous writing, Kim Scott, Taboo; unpublished manuscript award, Victoria Hannah, Kokomo; and people's choice award, Bri Lee, Eggshell Skull.
Winners of the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards and the Victorian Prize for Literature. Credit: Eddie Jim
Boochani told The Age from Manus that winning left him with a paradoxical feeling.
"My main aim in writing the book was for people to understand deeply how this system has tortured innocent people on Manus and Nauru in a systematic way for almost six years.
"I don't want to celebrate this achievement while I still see many innocent people suffering around me. This is why it's a paradoxical feeling. I demand freedom, give us freedom. We have committed no crime, we are only seeking asylum."
He said he hoped the awards would bring more attention to the situation on Manus and Nauru and help end "this barbaric policy. This award is important because it brings enormous shame to the Australian government."
Behrouz Boochani has won the Victorian Prize for Literature while detained on Manus Island. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Boochani's book, which has already been deemed ineligible for the NSW Premier's Awards and the Walkley Foundation's book awards because its author is neither an Australian citizen nor a permanent resident, was given special exemption from similar guidelines by the Victorian prize administrators, the Wheeler Centre.
Its director, Michael Williams, said the winner of the Victorian Prize had been decided by the chairs of all the judging panels. "That's a group of people who arguably have a horse in the race in a different direction. But they were unanimous."
Gig Ryan, one of those judges, said while Boochani was not an Australian citizen, "he, and his statelessness, are Australia's responsibility". His work was "certainly the most unusual book in its style, in its peculiar mix of almost coolly sociological study and impressionistic poetry".
Williams denied that the Boochani decision had politicised the awards. "Non-fiction books often delve into political and social issues. Our writers are going to be critics of our society and they are going to be throwing down challenges and they're going to be putting forward prescriptions for better way of doing things. It doesn't mean the award has been politicised, it means that through books we can make the most powerful, most lasting statements on the big issues of the day."
Kate Lilley was galvanised while writing Tilt by the emergence of the #MeToo movement. She said that while her mother was alive they had talked a lot about what had happened. "A lot of people presumed that we hadn't talked. She was an extremely charismatic, adorable person. She loved us but was not anyone's idea of an attentive mother."
Elise Valmorbida made a hasty dash to Melbourne from her home in London, where has lived since the 1980s, to receive her prize. She said she spent seven years writing her fourth novel, which is set in Italy during the fascist years. "I will certainly write another. It's like missing part of my body if I'm not writing."