As a member of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, Javiet Ealom faced violence and persecution from the government. In search of a better life, he boarded a boat with other asylum seekers. But rather than finding refuge, he was detained at one of Australia’s notorious offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea. After three years in the overcrowded, unsanitary and ’soul-crushing’ facility, Jaivet planned and executed what would be the only successful escape from the prison. He speaks with Helen Mann about his perilous journey, his new life in Canada and his new memoir, Escape from Manus Prison: One Man's Daring Quest for Freedom.
Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated. But in the case of Canadian author and journalist Leah McLaren and her mother – who is also a writer – the word complicated barely scratches the surface. McLaren was eight when her mother left the family and moved from rural Ontario to Toronto, where she bounced around jobs, apartments and relationships. When she moved in with her mother as a teenager, it was an unconventional pairing, with few rules or boundaries. And that sometimes meant sharing secrets… and one story, in particular, that was so devastating it would haunt both women for decades – altering their relationship. McLaren speaks with Helen Mann about her new memoir Where You End and I Begin, which explores the ramifications of that story – and her fraught relationship with her mother.