The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison [Paperback]

Warren Fellows (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2000

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 when you were so terrified you could scarcely bear it. No 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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kimberley Chambers, one-time DJ and street market trader, decided one fine day that she wanted to better herself, and with virtually no formal education and no previous experience, settled down to write her first novel, BILLIE JO. BORN EVIL quickly followed and both were signed us as part of the Preface fiction first list of acquisitions. She lives in Romford, close to her childhood friends and family. For more information please visit www.kimberleychambers.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Mainstream Publishing Company (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184018275X
• ISBN-13: 978-1840182750
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #400,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Testing the limits of horror upon humans.., December 2, 2004

By 

Takis Tz. (InYourHead) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison (Paperback)

Have you by any chance read the "Midnight express" or seen the movie thereof? Thought it was pretty horrible? Well, actually, things can get a lot, and i mean a lot worse than that.

In "The Damage Done" W.Fellows describes what can only be expressed as 12 undescribable years in a Bangkok prison complete with every human degredation you could possibly think of. Indeed, as i kept reading through his book it seemed to me as if i was reading about an experiment intended to test the absolute limits of human endurance by imposing the most horrifying conditions under incarceration. Certain experiences described by the author will be hard to stomach even for those way above the average of composure.

It's hard to even begin to imagine how anyone could survive this with his life let alone be in a relatively stable mental conditions afterwards. Imagine for example being forced to stand in a sewer neck-high. For several minutes that will probably seem like centuries. Imagine as well if you had to resort to eating the roaches of your cell as your only protein source. Sounds bad enough? It's only a mere few of the surreal moments this person endured in his 12 years in prison.

Fellows is fully aware of how many people view him since he'd been convicted as a heroin smuggler. But the question hanging from every page of his book is whether anyone is deservant of such treatment. Whether 12 years of incarceration are alone not enough..He doesnt directly answer himself. But you surely will after being through with his book. In one way or the other.

What is perhaps more interesting than the limits of human endurance that you'll inevitably have to consider is the limits of human sadism. I've pondered often myself on this and no matter what answer i came up with it's always been a disturbing one. Human saidsm is one side of our species that leaves very little doubt about how doomed we are. What we can do to other human beings is exactly what we are capable of doing and ARE doing to everything around us. And everything around us will not tolerate us for much longer, that seems to me a certainty.

Fellow's book, like basically any book written about a person's experience in prison is ultimately not about being locked up and only. It's about us. It's a harsh relentless look at what we are or what we can be. Not a nice picture by any means. In an ideal world this could be a wake-up call. But we're pretty far from an ideal world and even further from waking up.

So then, things being as they are, do what's offered. Read about the horrors we are capable of inducing on others. Attempt to do something incredible: think. This much we owe to ourselves.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bad Trip in Paradise, November 30, 2005

By 

Matthew P. Arsenault (SW Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison (Paperback)

There are very few things in this world that could be worse than being sentenced to a long stretch in a Thai prison. I picked up The Damage Done while on holiday in Bangkok and my trip certainly took a turn for the frighteningly paranoid.

In The Damage Done, Warren Fellows readily admits to smuggling drugs between South East Asia and his native Australia. He further admits to the many criminal indiscretions of his youth which brought him to his most unenviable predicament. However, Fellows never begs for the sympathy of the reader but rather recaptures his not so anomalous tale of traversing an Asian court system and subsequently its notorious prisons.

Fellows captures the rancid food, drug abuse and violence found in a Thai prison and the consequences such an environment plays on a captive's mental and physical state. Still, Fellows abstains from turning his experience into a preachy tale of woe, and keeps his work cuttingly sharp and extremely interesting.

It seems that the news is filled more and more with tales of Western tourists being tried and convicted in non-Western justice systems. Fellows offers a glimpse into what transpires once the news coverage dies and the convict is left to his own devices; a stranger in a strange land.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Prison Book Ever!!!, August 4, 2005

By 

JohnK (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison (Paperback)

Of all the "prison" stories I've read, this is by far the best. This book has been hugely popular in Australia for years now, and there's a simple reason why - "The Damage Done" details the most shocking, repulsive, and terrifying story of survival you are ever likely to read. And despite all the gory details, you will find it hard to stop reading.

The Author did a TV interview a few years back and he was truly a broken man. Read this amazing book to find out why.