It is philosophical in parts and explains the structure of Thailand’s jail culture very well. Nevertheless it is not gripping or ‘unputdownable.’ You only find out why Hoy is in jail at the very end and that’s not really clear. His time in jail didn’t sound as bad as other Thai jail stories. Could imagine his time spent in American prison worse. Collection of short essays about an American’s hard time in two of Thailand’s most notorious prisons. The story is based on the author's experience been jailed for 5 years in Thailand. Being a foreigner in Thailand's jail was not easy.

This is quite an entertaining book that, despite the fact that it is well written and entertaining, it is not exceptional. For books on prison life, in my opinion, there are much better books. For me Marching Powder by Rusty Young or Hotel Kerobokan by Kathryn Bonella give a much better account. for the most part, i enjoyed the book.. i liked the way the author writes.. the way the words flow together in a colourful narrative.. the stories of others, is an interesting way to write.. who are we if not impacted by our experiences, the people we share space with are bound to become part of our journey, our thoughts, our observations.. i mean also, if you are in prison for years, your experiences are limited to that space.. Honestly, I can’t imagine how some of the very few prisoners do it. The very few actually accept and just go in living. While the rest either escape with drugs and then end up getting hooked or join in the savagery. The stories in it are truly remarkable. So disgusting and revolting there are sometimes hard to believe.He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. Sentenced to life in prison, Hoy does his best to accept the fate he’s been given. While attempting to “adjust” to this third-world hellhole, he contracts tuberculosis and nearly loses his life. The overall picture is not the unrelentingly gruesome story promised but rather a thoughtful series of meditations on living as well as possible under the worst possible conditions.The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. I love true crime and insight but this is just boring. Narration is flat, stories are boring and I don’t like that you don’t even know what the author was accused of. it is without a doubt an eye-opening account of what actually goes on there, and an incredibly absorbing read. --Seattle Post-Intelligencer Starts out ok, but the stories get more and more unlikely as the book goes on. Had to stop listening when the author likened himself to a vampire getting energy from deaths during a storm.