Behrouz Boochani – Bio
Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish‑Iranian writer, political scientist and internationally acclaimed advocate for displaced people. Educated in Tehran (MA, political geography), he fled repression in 2013 and was intercepted en route to Australia, spending six harrowing years inside the Manus Island offshore‑processing regime. During that time he secretly composed No Friend But the Mountains via thousands of WhatsApp messages; the genre‑blending memoir swept Australia’s top literary honours and is now taught globally.
Boochani’s work spans journalism, philosophy and film. His landmark documentary Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017) offers a raw lens on carceral control, while his latest book, Freedom, Only Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2022), gathers essays and speeches that indict the wider refugee apparatus. Drawing on anti‑colonial thought and Kurdish poetic tradition, he reframes displacement as both lived reality and philosophical terrain, revealing how language, memory and art enable dignity amid systemic violence.
Behrouz is now based in Wellington, New Zealand. His commentary appears in The Guardian, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, and his honours range from the STARTTS Humanitarian Award to Amnesty International and Voltaire prizes. On stage he challenges complacency, offering actionable insight into ethical leadership, human rights and the future of migration.