In April this year, Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention centre on Nauru. There he interviewed more than half of the 54 asylum seekers then on the island. His articles, based on these interviews, for The Age and SMH drew an enormous response from readers. Freeing Ali expands beyond that article to tell the story of Ali Mullaie, an Afghan asylum seeker who spent three and a half years detained on Nauru. The Author backgrounds his profile of Ali and his fellow detainees with a discussion of the impact of the detention centre and the ‘Pacific Solution’ on the people of Nauru and their country.