The Greatest Books Written In Prison

Prison writing has undoubtedly gone on for as long as people have imprisoned one another, but its first recorded incident was in 523 AD, when Boethius, a classical Neoplatonist philosopher, wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while imprisoned for treason. Prison writing has come to be understood as a genre of literature defined by its author's imprisonment and since Boethius's Consolation, countless others have written while imprisoned, creating works such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience."

Whether creating works of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, writing has repeatedly been used as an outlet for imprisoned people. It has also become an inlet for free people towards understanding the conditions by which society claims to rehabilitate people. While some texts have been literally written in prison using smuggled instruments, other texts reflect a person's experiences while locked up, compiled orally during their time in prison, and only given written representation after their release.

This list is by no means exhaustive and unfortunately, prison writing will continue as long as people continue to imprison one another. These are some of the greatest books written in prison.

Hans Fallada was the pen name of Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen, born July 21, 1893. Throughout his life, Fallada was imprisoned frequently. In 1911, during a duel that was supposed to be a double suicide, Fallada survived and was instead sent to a mental institution. He was imprisoned again for several months in 1923 on for embezzlement, and again from 1925 to 1928.

Fallada struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction all his life and, per the Independent, was once again arrested and committed to the Neustrelitz-Strelitz psychiatric institution in 1944 for drunkenly shooting at his ex-wife, Anna Issel, with a pistol.

Fallada was known in the literary community for works such as Bauern, Bonzen, und Bomben (Farmers, Bigwigs, and Bombs) and Kleiner Mann—was nun? (Little Man, What Now?). When the Nazis came into power, Fallada sought to avoid political controversy, for example, with the "quite unpolitical" book Wer einmal aus dem Blechnapf frißt (Who Once Eats From the Tin Bowl). While the Nazis attacked his text for its humanizing depiction of convicts, many others considered him opportunistic for continuing to publish under the Nazi regime and taking notes from Joseph Goebbels himself.

During his incarceration, Fallada composed A Stranger in My Own Country: The 1944 Prison Diary and The Drinker, writing in a deliberately illegible scrawl, sometimes writing in code so he wouldn't get in trouble for his "passive resistance" against Nazism. The manuscripts wouldn't be deciphered until several years after his death.

After joining the African National Congress in 1942, Nelson Mandela campaigned against the South African government and its racist system of apartheid for 20 years. Mandela was arrested in 1962 for having orchestrated a national workers' strike the previous year. He was sentenced to five years, but he was brought to trial again in 1963 for political offenses and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mandela was imprisoned from November 1962 to February 1990. During these 27 years, he wrote diaries and drafted letters that later came together to form the book Conversations with Myself. As noted by Booktopia, Conversations with Myself contains not only Mandela's prison writings but his journals written while on the run in the early 1960s as well as speeches written during his presidency. Through this collage-work, the text becomes a literary album, an amalgamation of the disparate moments that spanned Mandela's life.

According to the foreword to Conversations with Myself that was written by Barack Obama, this amalgamated text offers a glimpse into the transformations that a person undergoes throughout their life. And along with its behind-the-scenes look, it reminds the reader that no one is perfect, but it is the imperfections that give people their transformative qualities.

George Jackson was only 18 when he was convicted in 1961 on questionable evidence. According to Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, he'd later write that he "was captured and brought to prison when I was 18 years old because I couldn't adjust." Because of his prior arrests, Jackson was sentenced to between one year and life in prison.

During his time at San Quentin, Jackson wrote and read frequently. He read Engels, Trotsky, and Mao, and wrote about the experience of prisoners. His writings tapped into the consciousness of a marginalized community; "They live like there was no tomorrow. And for most of them there isn't." After his death, they were compiled in Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson.

In 1969, Jackson was transferred to Soledad Prison. There, Jackson spent over seven and a half years in solitary confinement. Writing became a way to escape the dehumanizing experience of prison in addition to shedding a light on it. At Soledad Prison, Jackson became infamous when he and two other imprisoned people, Fleeta Drumgo and John Cluchette, were falsely accused of killing a white prison guard.

As reported by The Paris Review, on August 21, 1971, Jackson reportedly pulled a gun on the prison guards, tried to escape, and died in the ensuing gunfire. 

Born on February 20, 1925, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was one of the most prominent prose writers in Indonesia after its independence. In 1945, after Indonesia revolted against Dutch colonial rule, Pramoedya began working on an Indonesian-language magazine until his arrest in 1947. This was his first experience with writing in prison and his first novel "Perburuan (The Fugitive)" came out of the two years that he spent incarcerated.

Pramoedya was arrested again in 1965 after President Suharto rose to power and ordered the detention of his opponents without trials. According to Culture Trip, Pramoedya's increasingly critical political writings led to him being targeted by the government, and during his imprisonment, he was explicitly denied any writing supplies.

Undaunted, Pramoedya began composing an epic tetralogy orally, reciting the story to the people he was imprisoned with. The works became known as "The Buru Quartet," following the protagonist Minke, a Javanese boy who attempts to work through the complicated process that is the anti-colonialist struggle during the birth of nationalism in Indonesia. Per PBS, once Pramoedya was allowed to write, the other imprisoned people would take on his labor duties so that he had more time to write.

Pramoedya wrote other books in addition to the tetralogy during his imprisonment, but when riverboat men and priests were smuggling out his texts, they were caught and the books were destroyed by prison guards. He was released into house arrest until 1992.

Jean Genet's book Our Lady of the Flowers was published anonymously in 1943 when it first came out. It wouldn't be published under his name until the following year.

Written while Genet was imprisoned at Paris' Prison de la Santé for a string of burglaries, Our Lady of the Flowers tells a sexually explicit tale of the Parisian underworld while the narrator informs the reader that many of the stories are told in order to assist with his self-pleasure while in prison.

The early draft of Our Lady of the Flowers perished early. According to the introduction written by Jean-Paul Sartre, the drafts were written on brown paper that was to be made into bags by imprisoned people. Once, the manuscript was found by guards and it was burned. According to The Paris Review, Genet was sentenced to solitary confinement for three days as punishment for misusing the paper "for literary masterpieces." Undeterred, Genet rewrote his masterpiece and was able to smuggle it out with him upon leaving the prison.

Born on October 5, 1955, Susan Rosenberg became active in protesting early on. According to Politico, by age 11 she was attending anti-war and civil rights demonstrations with her parents and during her college years, she supported Vietnamese women's struggle against U.S. imperialism. In 1978, Rosenberg and a handful of other women including Marilyn Buck and Judy Clark formed a far-left organization called May 19th, also known as M19.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, M19 went from making posters and picketing to abetting prison breaks and robbing armored trucks. By 1983, M19 was setting off explosives. Between 1983 and 1984, M19 set off bombs in the north wing of the U.S. Capitol, an FBI office, the South African consulate in New York, the Israel Aircraft Industries building, and D.C.'s Navy Yard and Fort McNair. The bombings were always preceded by a warning call and proceeded by a pre-recorded anti-imperialist message.

Rosenberg was ultimately arrested in 1984 for a crime that she claims she wasn't involved with. She was one of the first imprisoned people at Lexington Prison, America's second high-security prison, where she ended up spending 16 years until her pardon in 2001. According to P.E.N., during her time in prison, she received an MFA from Antioch University and went on to receive four P.E.N. writing awards while incarcerated. Some 10 years after her release, she compiled her experiences and writing in An American Radical: A Political Prisoner in My Own Country.