These short stories, which appear in English for the first time, were composed for
the most part in prison, before Sarrazin’s novels were published to international acclaim in
1965. Here, Sarrazin turns her singular eye on the prison environment, charting the cruelties,
small kindnesses, constraints and paradoxical freedoms of daily life in prison. By turns
astute, tender and wryly humorous, Sarrazin presents a panorama ranging from the dangers
of ‘favours’ and clandestine letters, to the delights of illicit coffee and self-imposed creative
limits. Sarrazin’s stories swoop the quotidian into the epic, as officers, inmates, and alter
egos play out, in the small world of the prison, their comédie humaine. Against this backdrop
emerges Sarrazin’s own personal battle: to be, and express, herself.
 
Translated from the French by Sonya Moor.

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