Nine

"Andrzej Stasiuk is one of the most interesting literary figures to have emerged in post-communist Poland. The Walls of Hebron (1992), his first book, is a collection of 12 stories about prison based on the author's first-hand experience of the life inside after after he was jailed for deserting the Army in 1981 when Poland was under martial law. The book is not only a harrowing social and cultural commentary on the concept of freedom, or even the penal system, which he anchors in the biblical tradition, but also an extraordinary literary and stylistic exercise of unusual poetic power. The stories it contains are astonishing vignettes of the life inside. The book was commissioned in 1985 by an underground publishing house while official censorship was still in force. After receiving the manuscript, the publisher decided against publication. The Walls of Hebron was finally published in 1992 after the collapse of Communism by a small independent publisher and quickly gained a cult following."