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Hessom Razavi on statelessness and Australia’s detention centres

The ABR Podcast 04 November 2020

Hessom Razavi on statelessness and Australia’s detention centres

The ABR Podcast 04 November 2020

In today's episode, Hessom Razavi – the ABR Behrouz Boochani Fellow – speaks to Peter Rose about his essay 'Failures of imagination: From Tehran’s prisons to Australia’s immigration detention centres', which appears in the November issue. Hessom's essay offers a powerful reflection on the experiences that led to his family fleeing Iran to escape political persecution. Navigating the 1979 Islamic Revolution, political rebellion, and tragic family disappearances, Razavi examines the similarities between Australia’s immigration detention centres and the political prison he visited as a boy – and contemplates how easily the detainees’ fate might have been his own.


The ABR Podcast features a range of literary highlights, such as reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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Music credit: 'Moonrise' and 'Negentropy' by Chad Crouch is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

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