Jack Mapanje

Jack Mapanjeʹs memoir is the moving account of his imprisonment by the Malawian state and his struggle to probe the hidden motives behind his arrest. In 1981, Mapanje was a budding poet and scholar; his first collection of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods, had just been published in the prestigious African Writers Series, and his work on linguistics was having an impact on language and literary studies in central Africa and beyond. Just two years later, however, the government ordered the withdrawal of his poetry from all bookshops, libraries, and institutions of learning. And in September 1987, he was arrested and held without charge for nearly four years. This new book recalls those prison years as Mapanje records in his unique voice the terror of arrest, the reality of incarceration, and his daily struggle to retain a solid measure of sanity and spiritual freedom. -- Description from (Jan. 25, 2012).

Only now, with freedom, can Jack Mapanje speak of his harrowing ordeal in Mikuyu Prison, where 'desperate voices of fractured souls' clamour to be heard. In poems of uncommon power and unflinching description Mapanje condemns a brutal regime. Yet in these poems Mapanje also affirms the enduring love of family and friends and the spirit of his fellow detainees. Today, living in England, he celebrates the hope kept alive by those who fight for human rights.