In 2003 the businessman and outspoken Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint. After his first trial in 2005 he was held in Russian penal colonies for eight years. Written during this time, this is his account of prison life and the people he encountered.
There is the guard who delivers blows with no visible traces. The fraudster stitched up by the police for murder. The man who refuses to lie for a packet of cigarettes. The abandoned teenager, the down-and-out, the grass... He describes a hidden world of brutality and corruption, yet one where moments of humanity still manage to shine through.
One in ten Russian men pass through prison at some point in their lives. This book is a denunciation of an entire system of bureaucratic criminality, and a passionate call to recognise a human tragedy.
