Confessions of a People Smuggler (Dawood Amiri, Scribe)

Dawood Amiri fled Afghanistan with his family when he was a boy and settled in Quetta, Pakistan. He had hoped to establish a career as an accountant, but the rise of the Taliban meant his life was in danger. Amiri decided the best course of action was to make his way to Australia. In 2010 he arrived in Indonesia, and was ready to travel by boat to Christmas Island, when he was caught. Desperately short of money, he started working for people-smugglers. He was eventually arrested (one of the boats he organised sank, killing 96 asylum seekers, including two of Amiri’s friends) and sentenced to six years in Jakarta’s Cipinang prison. Confessions of a People Smuggler shows the human side of those fleeing their home countries and seeking asylum. Amiri’s story is one of unrelenting horror, tragedy and hopelessness; it reads like a mix between Hieronymus Bosch and Kafka. Amiri himself saw people-smuggling as noble humanitarian work ‘to help my brother asylum-seekers’, work he did with ‘purity and pain in my heart’. Confessions of a People Smuggler is starkly written and compelling, and will appeal to anyone seeking a more realistic, first-hand picture of the asylum seeker issue. It takes you into an underworld of desperate, stateless and unwanted people and shows a reality that so many of us turn away from. 

Chris Saliba is co-owner of North Melbourne Books and a freelance reviewer