From Remote Prisons to Global Readership

Abstract

This article examines the complex strategies of composition, translation, and outreach that Behrouz Boochani and Selahattin Demirtaş used while producing works of literature in prison. Whereas Demirtaş has been writing in Turkish and within a prison in Istanbul, Boochani asked for his writing to be published in English when he was detained as a stateless person in a multinational non-space – an offshore center where refugees from all over the world were detained. Instead of categorizing these works as extensions of their authors’ ethnic or national identities, this article reveals how they position themselves vis-à-vis different forms of oppression by producing transnational pieces of world literature.