Silent Escape - Three Thousand Days in Romanian Prisons

"A heartbreaking, human document . . . that ranks comparably to Eugenia Ginzburg's In the Whirlwind and Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope."—Vladimir Tismaneanu, author of Reinventing Politics

"A superb book. Without ever lapsing into self-pity, it allows the reader to enter the nightmarishly vindictive Romanian political prison system."—Daniel Chirot, author of The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe

About the author

Lena Constante (1909-2005) was a Romanian artist, essayist, and memoirist. She won the Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française's 1992 Prix Européen for this book's French edition. Franklin Philip is a freelance translator living in Boston. Gail Kligman is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Summary

Victim of Stalinist-era terror, Lena Constante was arrested on trumped-up charges of 'espionage' and sentenced to twelve years in Romanian prisons. This work offers an account of the first eight years of her incarceration - years of solitary confinement during which she was tortured, starved, and daily humiliated.

Additional text

"Constante has written a beautiful book about human endurance painfully learned; above all, it is a testament to the power of poetry to free the human spirit even when the physical body is suffering cold, hunger, and cruel degradation." 

Product details

• Authors: Lena Constante, Constante Lena, Gail Kligman
• Assisted by: Gail Kligman (Introduction), Kligman Gail (Introduction), Franklin Philip (Translation), Philip Franklin (Translation)
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.04.1995
• EAN: 9780520082090
• ISBN: 978-0-520-08209-0
• No. of pages: 257
• Series: Society & Culture in East-Cent; Society and Culture in East-Central Europe; Society & Culture in East-Cent
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom, Autobiography: general, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Human Rights, POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / European, Romania, Political oppression & persecution, Political oppression and persecution, Autobiography: philosophy and social sciences