Onetime political prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe tells how one particular book kept her hopes up during her imprisonment in Teheran:
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has revealed how a copy of the novel The Handmaid’s Tale among other books allowed her to feel liberated while she was locked up in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.
Well, okay. Considering how said dystopian novel is all about how a tyrannical government oppresses womyns, I guess that’s fair play (even though the actual Iranian Muslim government is far worse than Atwood’s).
But it does lead me to ask the question: if you were to be imprisoned for six years and could have only one smuggled book to keep you going, which one would you choose to have?
Right off the bat, I’m going to exclude religious works like the Bible, because that’s too obvious (and easy) a choice, especially for my religious Readers, bless ’em. But I will allow stuff like Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica because they are essentially philosophical works.
My own choice is a simple one, as much for its volume as for its complexity and erudition:
From Dawn To Decadence (Jacques Barzun)
List your choice (and remember, you get one and only one) in Comments, with reasons if possible.
Your choice seems to be a good one Kim and I never heard of it. I put it on my wish list and will peruse it more thoroughly later.
If not for your suggestion alluring me, I would possibly choose The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, which I have in pdf format.
A ditto from me. Never read it, always planned to read it and would give me something to hope for (particularly the FALL of whatever Empire was imprisoning me.
Gibbon’s work moves fast the first half-ish. Then starts to bog down when you get to the Byzantine section and N. Africa. It’s still a worthwhile read.
Ahem.
The Dummies Guide to Tunnelling Out of Prison.
For obvious reasons.
Those are the same reasons I would choose Paul Brickhill’s “The Great Escape,”
or something more practical. The US Army handbook on Escape and Evasion, perhaps.
Since the criteria is just one, probably Atlas Shrugged. A plus is its thick enough I could probably use it as body armor
I’ll second that choice.
Good suggestion. Perhaps the Fountainhead, too, if two books become permitted.
Does anyone know if they are available in large print editions or in Braille? 😀
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.
You are WAY too erudite for this back porch. Go sit in the corner with Stencil.
Hey, if I’m going to be stuck in stir for six years, I might as well learn how to survive it stoically.
Dragondoom by Dennis L. McKiernan.
It’s got it all — epic battles, the small quiet victories over onesself, honor, glory, pride, humility, love, hate, joy, sadness, misery, sacrifice, good heroes to root for, evil villians to jeer at. And a dragon or two….
All in all, simply a rip-roaring good tale that I’ve read at least once a year since I found it back in junior high school, and it’s never gotten old. Before I finally broke down and bought an electronic copy, it was the book that I’d loan out and not get back more than any other also, so everyone I gave it to loved it too 😀
Terry Pratchett: the Complete Works.
Take a ream of paper, a pencil and a lot of erasers, and write your own..
My lady wife being wheelchiair-bound, I haven’t read a book in the last year and a half. Soon, soon.
.
I’ll vote for the complete works of Robert A. Heinlein, because he is my all time favorite author. Barring that, the complete Terry Pratchett.
Stay safe
Assuming I’d be incarcerated due to some matter of conscience, I think I might choose something like The Pilgrim’s Progress. Would seem that would be helpful as one navigates the ups and downs associated with the consequences of one’s faith/convictions.
If not that, perhaps an anthology of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writings (esp. Live Not By Lies). For similar reasons as the above. I suspect I would need a great deal of encouragement as a prisoner of conscience.
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert A. Heinlein…
… the complete book as released by his wife in 1991, three years after his death.
.
Since my cousin Betty Foote gave [the abridged version] to me in the early-1960s, I read it every couple years.
Intellectually satisfying, and yet, I heard rumors it was only a fraction of the original story.
.
About a decade ago, I discovered a copy of the original — including the removed 60,000 or so words considered ‘too racy’ for 1961 publishers — in the library in Springfield, Oregon.
This is a completely different tale.
.
The phrase ‘going at it like bunnies’ seems appropriate.
And in 2012, the Library of Congress added it to their “These Eighty-Eight Books Shaped America” class.
The astute observer would hope LOC are referring to the whole thing.