<p dir="ltr"><i>N</i><i>o Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison</i> is a first-person, ethnographically nuanced account of Behrouz Boochani's journey by sea from Indonesia to Australia in 2013 and his subsequent transfer to Papua New Guinea's Manus Island Regional Offshore Processing Centre on the Lombrum navy base, where he joined thousands of other asylum seekers in indefinite detention. The book begins with a sentence from Boochani's first conversation with the book's translator, Omid Tofighian: “I just hope I wake up from this nightmare soon” (xi).<a href="https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/amet.12870#amet12870-note-0001_2" target="_blank"><sup>1</sup></a> What he presents in his book is indeed an ethnography of a nightmare.</p>
Publication Date
2020-02-01Journal
American EthnologistVolume
47Issue
1Pagination
4p. (p. 86-89)Publisher
WileyISSN
0094-0496Rights Statement
© 2020 by the American Anthropological Association
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Alimardanian M (2020). Ethnography of a nightmare: public anthropology, indefinite detention and innovative writing. American Ethnologist, 47(1), 86-89, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12870. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
