Men In Prison

Description

Victor Serge served five years in French penitentiaries (1912-1917) for the crime of 'criminal association' - in fact for his courageous refusal to testify against his old comrades, the infamous 'Tragic Bandits' of French anarchism. 'While I was still in prison,' Serge later recalled, 'fighting off tuberculosis, insanity, depression, the spiritual poverty of the men, the brutality of the regulations, I already saw one kind of justification of that infernal voyage in the possibility of describing it.'

Victor Serge was a Russian writer and a revolutionary who lived at the turn of the 20th century. He was an anarchist and later a Bolshevik, and his life as an outspoken critic of Stalin led to him being arrested twice, deported, and having to live out the remainder of his life in exile. He is the author of books that include Birth of Our Power, Conquered City, and Year One of the Russian Revolution. Richard Greeman is a translator and the author of Beware of Capitalist Sharks!: Radical Rants and Internationalist Essays. He has translated and written the introductions for five of Victor Serge's novels and he is cofounder of the Praxis Center and Victor Serge Library in Moscow. He lives in New York City.

"No purer book about the hell of prison has ever been written." --Martin Seymour-Smith, Scotsman "There is nothing in any line or word of this fine novel which doesn't ring true." --Publishers Weekly "This is a remarkable book... Capable of Dostoyevskian intensity and power..." --Francis King, Sunday Telegraph "This novel, properly so called by its author, being truth worked up as art, is strongly recommended both as a document and as a powerful work of literature." --Robert Garioch, Listener "Serge is a writer young rebels desperately need whether they know it or not. He does not tell us what we should feel, he makes us feel it." --Stanley Reynolds, New Statesman