I Will Never See the World Again

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But for most people, it’s nothing like that. The idea that you’ve got that degree of control seems to be, to me, a sentimental view of what it would be like to be both in these sort of cycles of crime that you’ve described, but also within a prison system where you are powerless in all kinds of ways, not just in relation to the officers or the system there, but also to the internal subsystems of the prisoners around you, and what they might do to you or not allow you, the power that they might exercise over you. So it’s interesting that these last two books you’ve chosen recognize the degree to which you’re powerless in that situation and how that, in itself, is quite a terror. Există în acest jurnal al scriitorului prizonier și un optimism debordant: "Un deținut numără orice. Cu excepția timpului. Un deținut descoperă timpul." Viewed from outside I was one old, white-bearded Ahmet Hüsrev Altan lying down in an airless, lightless iron cage.

On 15 July 2016, members of the Turkish armed forces attempted an overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. They cited the increasingly authoritarian nature of Erdoğan’s presidency and a dismantling of the officially secular nation-state formed by Mustafa Atatürk in 1923. The coup was a failure. A sweeping purge ensued, with thousands of army officials, civil servants, teachers and journalists put in prison. My father had asked the police if they would like some coffee. When they declined he laughed and said, ‘It is not a bribe, you can drink some.’ At a turn in the road, the car stopped and we got out. We walked through a door into a large underground hall. Intertwining gritty detail with lyrical effusion, Altan's narrative is a searing indictment of Turkey's authoritarian regime and an inspiring testament to human resilience." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) When faced with someone who has committed an awful crime, some people want to condemn that person, others move to minimise what they’ve done so they don’t have to share the burden of the victim’s pain. The humanitarian in us might hope that person can be rehabilitated in the future or try to look at that person as more than just their crime, to see them in the round. But the situation is more demanding when the perpetrator is your father and the crime was against you. For V, to minimise the abuse she suffered would only compound it. Since her father is dead, she cannot hope he is going to become a changed man. She could try and see him as more than just his crimes but, since his violations were so defining of their relationship, that would mean making him a stranger. We might think that her best option is to condemn him, but she says that she found no freedom for herself in imagining his soul spinning in an abyss. So she had to come up with another way to work through it all.On May 20, the team — accompanied by three Sherpas — set out for the summit. They began by passing through the Khumbu Glacier, before stopping at four camps along the route, where they were able to rest and resupply. During the ascent, Zhang insisted on doing everything himself — only accepting help when absolutely necessary. There’s a phrase I’ve heard on the landing of almost every prison I’ve worked in: ‘Keep your head in jail’” When I was writing my own book, I became a prison memoir nerd. I found myself scribbling my uncle’s name in the margins of this one a few times. My uncle Frank loves to entertain me with stories about his times inside. Altan is a literary heavyweight, whereas Frank needs me to fill out his benefit forms for him, but I think both of them have faith in the alchemic power of storytelling, that it can transform suffering and and give you access to power when you are powerless. I grumbled as if he stood before me, shoddily dressed, with his big balding head, long beard and charming smile. The young teacher stood up and put his hands together on his belly; the colonel across from me groaned and turned over to his other side.

Nu uită să ne spună și despre agresivitatea cu care regimul încearcă să domolească intelectul temerar:I Will Never See the World Again is in the lineage of books like Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Boethius is lamenting in his prison cell when Lady Philosophy visits him to tell him that “Nothing is wretched only thinking makes it so.” Frankl describes how in a Nazi concentration camp he discovered that there is a gap between stimulus and response and we choose our own attitude to a situation. Altan’s message is the same: ‘I am not going to let reality conquer me, I am going to conquer reality.’ One question that comes out of The Apology and the four other books we’ve spoken about is, ‘Does writing have the power to set you free?’ Both V and Altan would say yes. Reid and Betts aren’t so triumphalist. Levi’s relationship with writing was poisoned by his survivor shame. Levi wrote to bear witness, but the fact he could do so reminded him that he had survived while others hadn’t. Bearing witness reinforced his shame.

A remarkable memoir by a remarkable writer ... it is something special to visit Ahmet Altan in his prison, and to leave with an unexpected feeling of elation, motivated by the sheer, towering greatness of the human spirit' --Philippe Sands, author of East West Street Once they had arrived in the Himalayas, the real work began. The team started with a nine-day hike to reach the Everest base camp, followed by a practice expedition along the Khumbu Glacier — one of the most dangerous sections of the South Col route to Everest’s summit. I asked him whether a blind person had ever ascended Everest, and he said, ‘Yes, an American reached the summit in 2001,’” Zhang recalls. “Then, I asked: ‘Could I make it, too?’” Though tired enough to pass out, I couldn’t sleep. It was as if even sleep itself was too exhausted to come and take me.

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 The last chapter on the paradox of being a writer is very powerful. Even in a prison, a writer can tear down the walls that confine us. And that is very liberating.

The book is very moving and I read the first sections with sadness and anger. However, as I read further, my feelings turned into one of disbelief that the author omitted critical parts of his life prior to his imprisonment, that there was not a drop of regret or remorse for his share of what's going on today. It is quite something that the author is painting a picture in which he was a journalist critical of the government and sent to jail for that reason, whereas the truth is he for long years had cosy relationship with the government and was the editor of a newspaper which targeted and wrongly accused many people who in result were thrown to the dungeons of this brutal regime. The reason Ahmet Altan is in prison is not because he's a dissident journalist, but because he is no longer of any use to the "supreme leader". 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. Se simte faptul că fost scrisă de un romancier cu experiență,acesta reușind să expună adevărata față a unui regim cu o foarte mare eleganță. Zhang comes from humble origins. He grew up in a poor village outside central Chongqing, a megacity in southwest China. As a child, he often had to act as a guide for his father and uncle, who had both lost their sight to glaucoma. He still recalls the judgmental looks their neighbors gave them as they passed by.

I repeatedly warned him that Everest wouldn’t treat him with mercy because of his visual impairment,” says Qiangzi. I had surrounded and extinguished the fire of terror, which life had lit in a cage, with the fire of death. I promised Zhang’s family that I would take him to the summit safe and sound,” says Qiangzi. “I couldn’t accompany him there, but at least this decision ensured his safety.”