Update: Nov 6, 2019. Ahmet Altan was released from prison today after a retrial, but three of his co-defendants – Fevzi Yazıcı, Yakup Şimşek and Şükrü Tuğrul Özşengül, as do many other writers and journalists. Ik heb drie haltes. Of ik loop op de binnenplaats, of ik zit in mijn plastic stoel, of ik lig in mijn bed.” Moving with difficulty between the two cots, he turned to lie down beside the colonel on the plastic-covered rubber that lay on the floor. eloquent meditations on prison life, dreams of freedom and his love of literature." - Literary Review

His liberty and independence of thought were not effortlessly maintained: whatever your inner fortitude, prison, by its very nature, is crippling. “In a matter of 5 hours I had travelled across five centuries to arrive at the dungeons of the Inquisition.” The sensory deprivation was immediately disorienting: like Oscar Wilde, he discovered that time ceases to mean anything. “The air and the light in our cage never changed. Each minute was the same as the last. It was as if a tributary of the river of time had hit a dam and formed a lake. We sat at the bottom of that motionless pool.” The first anniversary of failed coup in Istanbul, 2017. Photograph: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images

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During a scorching heat, when crops catch fire, a circle is drawn around the blaze and the grain along that circle is set alight before the flames can reach it. Once the fire arrives at the circle it stops, as there is nothing left there to burn. They use fire to put out fire. That was the ideology. But in reality, it turned out that prisons are perhaps the most antithetical environments for moral growth. Put a human around that much violence and in that state of deprivation and their priority will be for survival, not salvation. Dit boek gaat niet enkel over het leven in een van Erdogans gevangenissen. Altan schrijft over hoop, literatuur, het schrijverschap, filosofie en religie. Zelf gelooft de schrijver niet in God, wat overigens tot interessante gesprekken leidt met zijn gelovige celgenoten. Vooral de manier waarop de gelo

Though the expedition is over, Zhang says his adventure is just beginning. He’s determined to continue pushing himself, hoping his feats can inspire blind people around the world.

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Gregg Caruso’s view has the unfortunate consequence that you can’t be praised for anything, either. It works both ways. You can’t be blamed for the crimes that you commit but you shouldn’t take any pride in your achievements either. It’s all down to prior causes.

Because the prospect of being cut off from the precious lode of writing scared me more than anything, that fear would suppress all other fears and give me the ability to endure. Courage would be born of fear. During this dark period, Zhang attempted to kill himself multiple times. Even with his girlfriend’s support, it took years for him to accept the hand fate had dealt him and find a new purpose in life, he says. The raging nothingness is palpable. How curious it is never to encounter a mirror and see one’s own face, just hands and feet. Not speaking but wanting to scream. I was like Julius Caesar, who, as soon as he was informed that a large Gallic army was on its way to relieve the siege at Alesia, had two high walls built: one around the hill fort to prevent those inside from leaving and one around his troops to prevent those outside from entering. Ahmet Atlan's memoir is a message in a bottle, a pearl in a bottle, smuggled out to us from Erdogan's sea of darkness. I Will Never See The World Again is a startling, heartbreaking testament to the author's honesty and resilience, a love letter to his calling, an eye-witness statement from the hell of denunciations and mass arrests that Turkey has become... Read this - it will explain why you ever read anything, why anyone ever writes' AL Kennedy, author of Serious SweetWhat matters is knowing there are people present beyond your cell walls and letting them know of your existence. You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here. Because, like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.”

He’s arrested, but the reality of it doesn’t hit him until he’s put in a cell (or ‘the cage’ as he calls it). He looks around and sees numerous people, people who haven’t been out for a number of years. Altan realises that he is never going to get to go to a restaurant again. He’ll never make love to a woman again. He’ll never get to go out for a stroll in the middle of the day. He will never see the world again. The reality of it has him by the throat. He can’t see how he’s going to cope. The document asked how they should dispose of my body in the case of an accident,” says Zhang. “I chose to have my body buried under the mountain.” These moments of masculine vulnerability are all the more powerful when you think that 93.5% of prisoners in the US are men (in the UK the number is 95%). Masculinities are a huge factor in crime. Prisons themselves are hothouses of patriarchy, predicated on domination, hierarchy and violence. Betts writes about his sons. He’s aware that soon they will become men. When he was on the brink of becoming a man, he did something violent and went to prison. It’s painful because children often offer parents a vicarious experience of innocence, but unable to forget that he is a felon, Betts is anticipating how he is going to have to tell his sons about the things men do, particularly the things men do to women. On the mountain, Qiangzi had to guide Zhang literally step by step — telling him how long a stride to take, in which direction, and alerting him to any potential hazards that lay ahead. Yet even this often wasn’t enough — and Zhang fell too frequently for comfort. Qiangzi had to provide him with a pair of knee pads to help him avoid getting injured.

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I grew up in a house full of books. My childhood was spent among them. Books were the wood sprites in a forest the essence of which I couldn't quite grasp, one that looked quite complex and boring to me. I liked the fairies bright charm, their air of mystery, their promising smiles more than the forest itself." I followed a policeman into the hallway, dragging my feet in my laceless shoes. He opened an iron door and we entered a narrow corridor where an oppressive heat grasped you like the claws of