Biography
Robert Hillman is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction and biography. His 2007 biography My Life as a Traitor (written with Zarha Ghahramani) will appear in numerous overseas editions this year and was recently shortlisted for the new and prestigious Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His autobiography The Boy in the Green Suit won the Australian National Biography Award for 2005.
His collaboration with Najaf Mazari on The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif grew out of an abiding interest in the hardships and triumphs of refugees. He has a particular empathy for Middle Eastern and Central Asian peoples and cultures, having travelled and worked in numerous countries in that region.
Co-author Najaf Mazari was born in 1971 in a small village near Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. At the age of 12 he left school and apprenticed himself to a master rugmaker without his parents’ knowledge. Thus began his love affair with rugs.
He fled Afghanistan in 2001 after being tortured by the Taliban, narrowly escaping their genocide of men and boys in Mazar-e-Sharif. Reluctantly leaving behind a young wife and six-month-old baby, he made a dangerous journey overland and an ocean voyage in a leaky boat. Upon arriving in Australia, he was sent to the Woomera Detention Centre. Upon his release, he settled in Melbourne and opened a shop selling traditional Afghan rugs.
His wife and daughter were finally given permission by the Australian government to join him in 2006 after a six-year separation. In April 2007 he was granted Australian citizenship.
Bibliography
The Boy in a Green Suit
My Life as a Traitor