Writers at Risk

FlorenceArt: Memoir of the revolution in Iran, then exile to Europe.

Dilara86: Holocaust memoirs

ELiz_M: An autobiographical novel of the author's experience in a Japanese prison camp as a young boy during WWII.

Dilara86: slavery

ELiz_M: A novel depicting the brutal, oppressive life of a Egyptian village girl. It was inspired by the author's contact with an imprisoned woman. Almost a decade later, the author herself was imprisoned and terrorized for her ongoing feminist activism.

ELiz_M: "one of the greatest treatments of flight and exile in modern German writing...." written during the author's own flight from the Nazis.

kidzdoc: This novel was written on toilet paper during the author's year long imprisonment.

ELiz_M: The author fled the violence tearing Yugoslavia apart in 1993. This novel is an attempt "to capture the slow and constant sense of loss and displacement caused by exile..."

chlorine: Haitian writer condemning Papa Doc's dicatorship. He was so angry that the family bought all the copies they could find to try and save her.

FlorenceArt: A memoir of McCourt's childhood in Ireland and escape to America.

FlorenceArt: A second-hand account of the life of Spiegelman's father, a Polish Jew, as he was persecuted and later sent to Auschwitz.

thorold: Italian-Jewish chemist tries to make sense of his experience of Auschwitz

chlorine: Black man living as a free man in the North of the US illegally sold into slavery in the south.

Dilara86: slavery

thorold: Young people trying to stand up against Ceaucescu

chlorine: Hungarian woman and her family flee the communist regime and emigrate to Switzerland.

rebeccanyc: Escaped from the Nazis only to be imprisoned for his work in the Free Hungary movement.

FlorenceArt: I'm including this book, which is the sequel to Angela's Ashes, because it belongs to the theme more than the first, although I understand it's not as good (I haven't read it).

FlorenceArt: A fictionalized account of the author's time in a Siberian prison camp.

thorold: Italian dissident sent into internal exile by Mussolini

chlorine: Woman living in Berlin at the end of WWII when Russians invaded. Had to endure multiple rapes and privations.

ELiz_M: A collection of short stories loosely based on the author's experiences in various concentration camps.

chlorine: Woman in Africa submitted to genital mutilations. Managed to emigrate to London. Was a UN special ambassador in the fight againts femage genital mutilations.

thorold: Italian communist imprisoned under Mussolini, leading theoretician of European Marxism

thorold: Gay Cuban novelist's autobiography (imprisonment, exile, AIDS)

kidzdoc: This novel is about the persecution of the Romanian German population in Stalinist Russia, and its deportation to forced labor camps after World War II.

ELiz_M: from wiki: Behan eventually joined the IRA at sixteen, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and he was also imprisoned in Republic of Ireland.

thorold: Not read, but looks relevant

chlorine: Young woman in Afghanistan forced to live under Taliban's rule. Escaped to France and wrote this book.

thorold: US anarchist & feminist exiled to Russia and then to France

thorold: Russian poet who wrote about her encounters with the Stalinist terror

rebeccanyc: Born in exile, died in exile, jailed twice by the French and once by the Soviets.

rebeccanyc: Written back and forth on sheets of paper when Fallada was imprisoned in a Nazi mental hospital for the criminally insane.

ELiz_M: The first black woman to escape from slavery in the British colonies (West Indies) and publish a record of her experience.

SassyLassy: Two writers living in exile

thorold: The Mann family in exile

thorold: Czech dissident (later president) writes to his wife from prison

thorold: On being exiled from a country that no longer exists (GDR) - also has a lot about other German political exiles in California, like the Manns

ELiz_M: The main character, like the author, was a victim of China's "anti-rightest movement" in the mid-1950s. The novel depicts the banal brutality of the political system.

FlorenceArt: Memoir of the author's life as a Polish Jew persecuted both by the nazis and soviets.

spiphany: Writings of the poet Ovid after his banishment from Rome in 8 AD.

thorold: Scottish teenager who tried to assassinate Franco and spent time behind bars in Spain and in the UK

FlorenceArt: Memoir of a child and her family trying to survive in occupied Hungary.

kidzdoc: Dowlatabadi composed this novel internally while he was imprisoned in Iran, and wrote it shortly after his release.

thorold: British/Irish playwright persecuted because of his sexuality (this is a book about rather than by)

spiphany: Andrei Sinyavsky (pseud. Abram Tertz) was tried and imprisoned for his Soviet-critical writing (The Trial Begins; On Socialist Realism). "A Voice from the Chorus" was based on his experiences while imprisoned.

ELiz_M: An account of the writer's arrest and trial, his prison dreams and fantasies.

thorold: Russian 19th century socialist exiled to London

SassyLassy: Written by Bukharin while he was in prison before his execution under Stalin

Dilara86: Memoirs of a feminist anarchist who was imprisoned and sent to a penal colony

spiphany: Heym fled Nazi Germany to the US, where he fought with the Americans in WWII. Left the US in the 1950s because of his communist politics, emigrated to East Germany, where he was initially welcomed, but later banned from publishing due to his criticism of the government.

thorold: Two great German-Jewish poets exchange letters

Dilara86: Written by a former Islamic State hostage

thorold: White journalist jailed for his part in an anti-apartheid group.

thorold: The author was imprisoned together with Mandela

thorold: Poet who was imprisoned by the regime in Malawi

thorold: German-Jewish poet who wrote about life after the Holocaust

thorold: Left-wing political exiles from the Continent in 19th century London

thorold: Play by-and-about two South African political prisoners on Robben Island staging Antigone

spiphany: Biermann's expatriation by the East Germany government provoked protests by many prominent German writers.

thorold: Dutch journalist stuck in revolutionary Russia