The Damage Done: twelve years of hell in a Bangkok prison

Think about the most wretched day of your life. Maybe it was when someone you loved died, or when you were badly hurt in an accident, or a day hen you were so terrified you could scarcely bear it. Now imagine 4,000 of those days in one big chunk. In 1978 Warren Fellows was convicted in Thailand of heroin trafficking and was sentenced to life imprisonment. 'The Damage Done' is his story of an unthinkable nightmare in a place where sewer rats and cockroaches are the only nutritious food, and where the worst punishment is the khun deo - solitary confinement, Thai style. Fellows was certainly guilty of his crime, but he endured and survived human-rights abuses beyond imagination. This is not his plea for forgiveness, nor his denial of guilt; it is the story of an ordeal that no one would wish on their worst enemy. It is an essential read: heartbreaking, fascinating and impossible to put down. 'Fellows admits he was caught bang-to-rights, but even the most hardened criminal would appear an innocent inside the barbaric prison system he subsequently endures. The picture that builds is gross, a horrific contemporary version of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch... If you've ever had even as much as a spliff on a Ko Samui beach, you must read this book' - James Brown, GQ 'The author made the mistake of trying to traffic heroin through Thailand and wound up in prison for 12 years... a gruelling cautionary tale reminiscent of Midnight Express' - Tobias Jones, Independent on Sunday