Asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani wins top Victorian literature prize
Refugee Behrouz Boochani poses for a photograph on Manus Island in 2017. AAP
An Iranian asylum seeker in detention on Manus Island has won the Victorian Prize for Literature.
Behrouz Boochani took out the top prize at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards on Thursday for his novel No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.
The prize money is $100,000.
Boochani's novel also won the Prize for Non-Fiction, worth $25,000.
Boochani, a Kurdish journalist, has been in detention since 2013.
"I don't want to celebrate this achievement while I still see many innocent people suffering around me," he told The Age.
"This is why it's a paradoxical feeling.
"I demand freedom, give us freedom.
"We have committed no crime, we are only seeking asylum."
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