The Silent Escape Three Thousand Days in Romanian Prisons |
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| Author:
| Constante, Lena |
| Translator:
| Philip, Franklin |
| Introduction by:
| Kligman, Gail |
| Series title: | Society and Culture in East-Central Europe Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-0-520-08209-0 |
| Publication Date: | Apr 1995 |
| Publisher: | University of California Press
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| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | USD $29.95 |
Book Description:
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Winner, 1992 Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française Prix Européen "I have lived, alone, in a cell, 157,852,800 seconds of solitude and fear. Cause for screaming! They sentence me to live yet another 220,838,400 seconds! To live them or to die from them."--from
The Silent Escape Victim of Stalinist-era terror, Lena Constante was arrested on trumped-up charges of "espionage" and sentenced to twelve...
More Description Winner, 1992 Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française Prix Européen
"I have lived, alone, in a cell, 157,852,800 seconds of solitude and fear. Cause for screaming! They sentence me to live yet another 220,838,400 seconds! To live them or to die from them."--from The Silent Escape
Victim of Stalinist-era terror, Lena Constante was arrested on trumped-up charges of "espionage" and sentenced to twelve years in Romanian prisons. The Silent Escape is the extraordinary account of the first eight years of her incarceration--years of solitary confinement during which she was tortured, starved, and daily humiliated.
The only woman to have endured isolation so long in Romanian jails, Constante is also one of the few women political prisoners to have written about her ordeal. Unlike other more political prison diaries, this book draws us into the practical and emotional experiences of everyday prison life. Candidly, eloquently, Constante describes the physical and psychological abuses that were the common lot of communist-state political prisoners. She also recounts the particular humiliations she suffered as a woman, including that of male guards watching her in the bathroom. Constante survived by escaping into her mind--and finally by discovering the "language of the walls," which enabled her to communicate with other female inmates. A powerful story of totalitarianism and human endurance, this work makes an important contribution to the literature of "prison notebooks."