“This blistering account demonstrates how fiction can sometimes out-do non-fiction when it comes to arguing for the rights of others. Think of To Kill a Mockingbird, or Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy, both of which appeal to our sense of humanity and justice, albeit in different ways. Gébler’s enlightening series of linked histories remind us of how men are simply left to rot in their own psychological ordure, without redemption, in the name of so-called justice. It is an essential contribution to any debate on the penal system, and reminds us that long-term incarceration is a death sentence as lethal as any injection or the electric chair.”