Author Description

Victor Serge was thrown in prison in 1912 for revolutionary activities against the French Government. He stayed there until 1917 in complete isolation from the outside world that was fighting the Great War, sometimes within earshot of the prison walls.Men in Prison is a fictionalized account of his five years but everything he says is true - an authentic and moving story of the men who suffer life and death in the most taxing society civilization can force on its misfits. Here are the petty thieves, the wife-slayers, the bourgeois embezzlers who claim perpetual 'innocence', the arsonists, muggers and the Real Men - the professionals who refuse to give an inch of their pride to the power of authority.This is not only the vivid single experience of the articulate thinker but the whole world of the captive soul - just as relevant now as it was sixty years ago.The cover of this edition shows a detail of a photograph by Fred Mayer (Magnum).