The Top Seven Best Fictional Prison Book Published

By Debra Wood


Literature is an all encompassing form of writing and the arts that has touched on innumerable subject matters. Anything from science, philosophy, fine arts, religion, mathematics, medicine, and other topics has been transformed by gifted individuals into written or literary formats. A genre that has gained a cult following since its initial conceptualization is prison literature. It involves books written by people in jail or stories revolving around what happened in inside one.

It generally encompasses all books that were written by authors who were trapped in a jail cell or in house arrest during the time of writing. The contents of these books often range from the experience of living in such condition, or are based on actual events that took place in a similar setting. For more information regarding this, you will find a short list of great Fictional Prison Book ever written below.

An iconic figure in the Realism movement is Fyodor Dostoyevsky. One of his earliest works is titled The House of the Dead and it emphasizes on the experiences of several convicts who were sentenced to spend time in an infamous camp in Siberia. While this is an important event in Siberian culture, the characters are purely fictional and are not based on any other stories.

A trending online streaming series is called Orange is the New Black, often shortened into OITNB. It recounts the experiences and musings of Piper Kerman who was imprisoned after facing trial. Her case revolved around drug trafficking and laundering money. The novel is actually a memoir by a woman of the same name.

A book that garnered some controversy is Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. It gained some notoriety during its time of release because it contained some implications and heavy references to the trials that took place in Moscow. Koestler has not made any comments towards it but nevertheless, the work received high praise and was even enlisted as his best work ever published.

Margaret Atwood became nominated for many awards and went on to win a few after publishing Alias Grace. While based on a real murder that took place, it focused more on the serial killers rather than the victims. Two servants who worked for Thomas Kinnear conspired to kill him and one of his housekeepers. When they were found out, they faced heavy prison sentences.

Even though it was regarded more as a science fiction tale, it still contained plenty of jail literature influence. Such is the work of Jack London on The Star Rover whose main character is Darell. Darell works as a university professor until he faces trial for murder. When he loses, he is then tortured by guards by making him wear a jacket so tight it crushed his viscera. To forget the pain he felt, he often performed astral projection to escape his reality.

Jean Genet has a reputation for being an activist for politics and human rights. However, he was also a novelist who wrote many books and poems, including Our Lady of the Flowers. The prose itself is reminiscent of poetical prose and focuses on a character who resides in the undergrounds of a Parisian society. While he resides here, the encounters a bunch of people who are accustomed to such bleak lifestyles and most of them are homosexuals.

Memoirs from the Women Prison is by Nawal El Saadawi. It recounts the objectification and discrimination women experience during imprisonment. It focus on sexism forced upon them that made their time spent there twice as hard.




About the Author:



Share on :

0 comments:

Post a Comment