"There has been much written about the Rohingya people of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The Muslim ethnic group has been persecuted for generations, most recently from 2017, when 800,000 picked up whatever they could carry to flee to Bangladesh. But little has been written from the point of view of a Rohingya growing up in Myanmar – the daily humiliations, the struggle for survival, the fear, the stories whispered through generations to ensure they are not lost. Habiburahman, known as Habib, was born in a village in the west of the country around 1979 – he is not quite sure of the year. He has written his life story, and through that, the story of his people. We meet in his publishers’ bland office in Melbourne, Australia. He is dressed in a neat blue shirt and dark trousers, and his black hair is slicked back. He laughs readily and his phone buzzes with messages. Habib arrived in Australia by boat in 2009 and, although he is a recognised refugee and has a temporary visa, his status remains unresolved. He is still stateless. He has no passport. “I have nowhere to go,” he says, with a laugh that has little humour in it. We speak in English and Habib wrote the book in English with the help of a French journalist, Sophie Ansel, who has reported extensively on the Rohingya. He explains that the book began with Ansel writing him questions, to which he would provide long answers about his life. It was first published in 2018 in French and is now being released in English. Habib says he wanted to write his story because “my generation, my grandfather, great-grandfather – we have been oppressed for a long time and this has never been reported. Our history is [becoming] lost. The land where we lived in the past is now replaced with government buildings, new projects; everything has gone. The new generation of Burmese, they don’t know anything about Rohingya.” He called the book First, They Erased Our Name..."