Still Alive: Notes from Australia’s Immigration Detention System

Safdar Ahmed’s Still Alive: Notes from Australia’s Immigration Detention System interweaves journalism, history and autobiography with a striking visual style to bring to light the crucial untold stories of refugees in Australia, and the immigration detention systems they confront here.

In early 2011, Safdar Ahmed visited Sydney’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre for the first time. He brought pencils and sketchbooks into the centre and started drawing with the people detained there. Their stories are told in this book

Interweaving journalism, history and autobiography, Still Alive is an intensely personal indictment of Australia’s refugee detention policies and procedures. It is also a searching reflection on the redemptive power of art. And death metal.

Safdar Ahmed won a Walkley Award in 2015 for his webcomic Villawood: Notes from an immigration detention centre.

WINNER 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – BOOK OF THE YEAR
WINNER 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Award – MULTICULTURAL NSW AWARD
WINNER GOLD LEDGER 2022 COMIC ARTS AWARDS OF AUSTRALIA
WINNER 2022 CBCA EVE POWNALL AWARD
SHORTLISTED 2021 ALIA Notable Australian Graphic Novels List