NOMINATED FOR THE 2023 HERITAGE TORONTO AWARDS

“There are few things more rewarding than coming across a book you have never heard of and, from the opening sentence finding yourself well and truly hooked. [. . .] He takes you with him on a journey that reads like an adventure but for the gut-wrenching fear and constant deprivation he and his fellow travellers must endure. And which he so poignantly describes. It is a true tale of an asylum seeker, one man’s story of the 90 million men, women and children worldwide fleeing injustice, pestilence, war or famine in search of not just a better life but life itself. [. . .] Escape from Manus Prison gives a face to the faceless, that vast tide of humanity forcibly displaced.” —Oakville News

“Stunning. This book should be on every reading list in the country. Stateless, without papers and too often without a drop of water to drink, Jaivet Ealom escapes Myanmar and the Rohingya genocide that continues to destroy his people. From Jakarta to Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, in sinking boats and cargo planes, he lives by his wit. In this world, babies drop to the bottom of the ocean and men are caged, beaten, numbered. A chance reading of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning restores his soul enough to get him, still undocumented, to Toronto. Ealom writes, ‘The choice of how I responded, or who I wished to be, was still my own to make.’ We share Ealom’s world, and this choice is ours too. Read this book. Know who you wish to be.” —Kim Echlin, award-winning author of Speak, Silence