The Silent Escape - (Society and Culture in East-Central Europe) by Lena Constante (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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"

Book Synopsis

Winner, 1992 Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française Prix Européen

"I have lived, alone, in a cell, 157,852,800 seconds of solitude and fear. Cause for screaming! They sentence me to live yet another 220,838,400 seconds! To live them or to die from them."--from The Silent Escape

Victim of Stalinist-era terror, Lena Constante was arrested on trumped-up charges of "espionage" and sentenced to twelve years in Romanian prisons. The Silent Escape is the extraordinary account of the first eight years of her incarceration--years of solitary confinement during which she was tortured, starved, and daily humiliated.

The only woman to have endured isolation so long in Romanian jails, Constante is also one of the few women political prisoners to have written about her ordeal. Unlike other more political prison diaries, this book draws us into the practical and emotional experiences of everyday prison life. Candidly, eloquently, Constante describes the physical and psychological abuses that were the common lot of communist-state political prisoners. She also recounts the particular humiliations she suffered as a woman, including that of male guards watching her in the bathroom. Constante survived by escaping into her mind--and finally by discovering the "language of the walls," which enabled her to communicate with other female inmates. A powerful story of totalitarianism and human endurance, this work makes an important contribution to the literature of "prison notebooks."

From the Back Cover

"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

Review Quotes

"[An] expressive, desolate memoir . . ."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"A powerful testament to the uncanny resilience of the human spirit. Constante relates in mesmerizing detail the eight years of solitary confinement that she suffered in Romanian prisons after being convicted in the Stalinist show trials of 1948. . . . It is rare for such an important historical document to be rendered with such profound artistic integrity." -- "Kirkus Reviews"

"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." -- "Women's Review of Books"

"Constante's story vividly captures the prisoner's desperate struggle to hang onto her sanity and humanity and the remarkable victory when she and other women prisoners learned to communicate through "the language of the walls." A moving contribution to the literature of political imprisonment."-- "Booklist"

"This is an important contribution to the literature of the Stalinist period in Eastern Europe, to prison narratives (joining the works of Arthur Koestler, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Evgenia Ginzburg), and to the literature of the human spirit. Highly recommended for all libraries." -- "Library Journal"

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.