When I first started reading this, I thought you were talking about the "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn until I seen the author's name, Behrouz Boochani.

"The Gulag Archipelago" was a book that changed the course of Russian history, revealing the atrocities of a government that used terror against its own population.

But your book about Manus is about a modern day atrocity, which thankfully, Behrouz Boochani's work and the awarding of the literacy award, has shed some light on, revealing this ongoing inhuman treatment of folks, brought it to the forefront. May we not blindly ignore it.

I've only just begun reading the "The Gulag Archipelago" but the take I'm having is the fear produced by the act of the government gulag making arrests and prolonged imprisonment (without any just cause, many were just to fill the quotas handed down) This fear silenced the people and had them committing strange acts to try to avoid the dreaded moment of being arrested (and it seemed no one was immune to it happening to them).

Jordan Peterson (who wrote a new forward for the abridged version) had pointed out in one of his lectures that if we are really honest with ourselves, and acknowledge that we all have a dark side to us, when we think of what we would do if we were, say, the guard at one of those interment camps, what might we do to save our skin?
Although we may say that we would never act like those people through out history, the truth is that we are all very capable of doing those atrocities and until we acknowledge that, we will never have the strength to stop it arising if those horrid conditions were to occur.

Bravo for those who have used the power of literature to expose man's inhumanity that we may guard against it ever arising in us and be willing to speak out against it. There words may give us the impetus to criticize and to question our position on such things, to break the silence.

Thank you for bringing this to our awareness! May it awaken more folks, giving voice to those enduring such unnecessary hardships at our governments own hand.