World literature has been written in prison. We introduce you to five famous authors of prison literature.
What remains when you’re sitting in a cold, naked cell, waiting for the death sentence that has been passed on your life? Writing. At least if Boethius has his way. While the Roman philosopher waited for his execution around 524 AD, he sought solace in ink and paper and wrote his work The Consolation of Philosophy, which was to become a bestseller of the Middle Ages. In a dialogue with philosophy, Boethius sought answers to why, if there really is a just God, only the good ever suffer. Philosophy answers in the way we are used to: in riddles.
In prison, you are also confronted with the dungeon of your own thoughts. But where there is no escape, there is still this last outlet of writing. It might be why entire novels have been written in the prisons of this world. Since Boethius breathed out his thoughts in his lonely cell, prison literature has become a literary genre in its own right. Books, letters, diaries, snapshots and poems were written behind bars and unrelenting prison walls. In that place where fate imposed an absolute end on man, he created a new beginning by writing. And he is still doing it.
Prisoner literature has long enjoyed status and recognition. Books ranging from The Consolation of Philosophy to The Gulag Archipelago have conquered the world from prison. In Germany, writing in handcuffs is even honoured with the Ingeborg Drewitz Literature Prize for Prisoners. The Literature Prize has been awarded eleven times since its institutionalisation and is intended to give prisoners a platform for their thoughts and experiences in captivity.
But which books have actually been written in captivity? Our team at novum publishing presents five famous authors who wrote their work in the grey room of a cell.
Art from prison: Five famous authors of prison literature
Miguel De Cervantes
Slave, tax collector and writer–the life of Spanish author Miguel De Cervantes was at least as adventurous as that of his most famous character, Don Quixote. Work on the glorious chivalric novel began in Seville prison, where Cervantes was serving a sentence for embezzling state funds. However, Spain’s national poet had already experienced imprisonment years earlier when he was deported to Algiers as a slave. Cervantes tried in vain to escape for five years before he was finally freed from his yoke in 1580.
Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Hunger, exhaustion, cold, illness and death – the Russian writer and system critic Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn experienced all of these first-hand. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced without trial to eight years in prison and eternal exile for criticising Stalin. The Nobel Prize winner for literature recorded his experiences in the Soviet labour camp, which devastated every soul, in several books, including the now famous The Gulag Archipelago. The work is not only a testimony and contemporary document of the dehumanising forced labour that became the death sentence of many during the time of Soviet oppression but also a remembrance of those who lost their lives there.
Anne Perry
Anyone who owns crime novels by Anne Perry has books by a murderess on their shelves. The British author, whose crime novels have sold more than 25 million copies, was guilty of a serious offence in her youth: together with her friend Pauline Parker, she murdered Parker’s mother. Because she disapproved of the close relationship between the two friends, they killed Honora Parker with a brick. Perry, who was only 15 years old at the time of the crime, was sentenced to five years. The prison must have been a rich source of research and inspiration for the author: Perry’s crime novels are characterised by a high degree of quality, authenticity and comprehensibility of the crimes described in them. Perry’s dark past was made into the film Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson with Kate Winslet in the leading role.
You can find a selection of other literary film adaptations worth seeing in this article!
Marquis de Sade
According to his harshest critics, de Sade’s work corrupts society, virtue and morals. The French nobleman and author spent a large part of his life in prisons and insane asylums, where he fantasised about societies without moral precepts and virtues. He captured their cruellest excesses in works that glamorised pornography, chaos and violence and were and still are the subject of fierce debate among scholars and philosophers, including Simone de Beauvoir, Camus and Nietzsche. The Marquis wrote his controversial works in prison in tiny handwriting so as not to attract attention through excessive use of paper.
Wolfgang Borchert
Oppressive feelings, anxiety and hopelessness, characterise the story Die Hundeblume (roughly The Dog Flower), which the German writer Wolfgang Borchert wrote in his mind in a military prison. The experiences and thoughts that gnawed at the young poet in his solitary cell formed the basis for the masterpiece, which describes Borchert’s turning point from poetry to prose. The work provides an insight into the torture of imprisonment, which, with no prospect of a future and as a dark reflection of the present, should certainly be open to debate.
In his photo book “End of Line”, star photographer and novum publishing author Manfred Baumann provides rare insights into the lives of prisoners and death row inmates. The photo reportage follows the fate of two death row inmates on Polunsky Unit, the death row with the most executions in the USA. Find out more about the book here.
Which works of prison literature have you already read? Can you recommend books or authors who wrote their work in the solitude of a prison cell? As always, we look forward to your opinion in the comments!
Let your fingers roam freely over your keyboard!
Your team at novum publishing
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