Ruby

The only novel that I can remember where I finished reading and turned straight back to the start to read it again, it was so good. Amazing writing, realistic and well-drawn characters and very human dilemmas. Thank you Sally for bringing such an excellent book into the world!

Putting the “people” into “boat people”

Adele Dumont makes the political personal with this thoughtful and moving account of her time as a teacher in Australian immigration detention centres.

Starting out as a volunteer on the far flung rock of Christmas Island, Adele finds great meaning in her work, teaching English to men who have escaped both desperate and dangerous situations to come to Australia by boat. Hesitant about joining the monolithic prison company, she nevertheless ends up working at one of their most remote centres, in the baking heat of Derby, WA.

Curtin Detention Centre becomes her world, much as it is for the men forever waiting behind its fences for their cases to be assessed. Life behind the wire is not all bleak though, and her classroom is full of laughter and human connections, a space where students become friends, and share their hopes for a safer life in Australia.

Gradually though, the endless waiting starts to take its toll, and the mood in the camp darkens. Self-harm and hunger strikes become the men's only outlet for the interminable pressure of having nothing to do, nowhere to go. Constant new arrivals stretch the centre to breaking point, and Adele is pushed past her limits teaching 72 hour weeks. She starts to worry her own empathy might be eroding, worn thin by the constant demand of trying to inspire hope in a place that seems more and more hopeless.

From interviews and journal records, Adele Dumont has reconstructed this highly personal narrative on a subject that is all too often over-politicised and oversimplified, into one line slogans and party lines. Her writing is at once clear and engaging, with a well developed structure that makes the book read like a novel you won't want to put down. Her insight and empathy are clear through it all, and make great company on this journey into a part of Australia much discussed but rarely seen.

Whatever your side of the fence, this truly is the book on immigration detention, “boat people”, asylum seekers, refugees, “queue jumpers” (or cu-cumbers?) that every Australian needs to read.