Sunday Salon: Books Behind Bars

Weeks after reading it, The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky is still on my mind.  I thought I would dig up some other books set in prisons just for fun (I know, my version of fun is a little tweaked).  After hours and hours of research random googling, here are four prison books that I found interesting.







You Got Nothing Coming: Notes from a Prison Fish by Jimmy Lerner

You Got Nothing Coming, Jimmy A. Lerner's memoir of his first year as an inmate in a Nevada state prison, is a shocking, hilarious, and heartbreaking narrative of a world both parallel to and absolutely alien from the one most readers inhabit. With deft, economical prose, Lerner, a middle-aged former marketing director for a major corporation, introduces us to his fellow inmates--swastika-tattooed skinheads, Wiccans, methamphetamine addicts, and fashion-conscious prostitutes, among others--as well as a multitude of prisoner scams, nonexistent but on-the-books rehab programs, and the life-or-death intricacies of the convict code of etiquette. Lerner's ear for prison language is pitch-perfect, and much of what we learn comes directly from the mouths of the incarcerated. Lerner has, in effect, written a nonfiction novel, one artfully laced with mordant humor and by turns tender, caustic, insightful, and relentlessly candid. ~Amazon

Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
Novel by Jean Genet, written while he was in prison for burglary and published in 1944 in French as Notre-Dame des fleurs. The novel and the author were championed by many contemporary writers, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau, who helped engineer a pardon for Genet. A wildly imaginative fantasy of the Parisian underworld, the novel tells the story of Divine [while he is in prison], a male prostitute who consorts with thieves, pimps, murderers, and other criminals and who has many sexual adventures. Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, the novel affirms a new moral order, one in which criminals are saints, evil is glorified, and conventional taboos are freely violated. ~Amazon

Papillon by Henri Charriere
Henri Charrière, called "Papillon," for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken. ~Amazon

Stone City by Mitchell Smith
This gripping novel is many things. On one level it is a page-turning murder mystery. On another it is almost a sociological study of prison life, its rites and rituals, its racial antagonisms and its power ploys, its intimidations and its deprivations. On another level, a large unnamed Midwestern prison serves as a metaphor for contemporary America, festering with evils and dreaming of innocence. In that prison two inmates have been murdered and a former history professor, jailed for killing a girl in a drunken driving accident, is forced by the different coercive pressures of the prison authorities and the inmate kingpin to find out who is the killer. Graphic and searing, an unflinching, harrowing vision of hell, this is a fine novel with strong best-seller potential. ~Amazon

As always my time spent in boredom has resulted in more books being added to my to-read pile which has reached Sisyphean ridiculousness.  Do you know of any books set in prison I should be looking at?

You Know You're Looking at a Winner....

Okay, that Jamie Foxx song has been stuck in my head for days. I apologize. But seriously, I do have two winners to announce:

Greg from The New Dork Review of Books won Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, and Dawn at She is Too Fond of Books won a book for offering up a suggestion for smarty pants beach reads.
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Finally, if you haven't signed up already, you should head over to my post about Thumbing Through Thoreau. I want to send it around to everyone and have them annotate! You know it will be fun to see what others have written. Geek fun, but fun nevertheless.