Romanian artist Constante and her companion, Harry Brauner, an ethnomusicologist, were caught in the dragnet for the show trial of Romanian Minister of Justice Lucretiu Patrascanu in 1954. Patrascanu was convicted of treason and executed; Constante was sentenced to l2 years' imprisonment?as was Brauner?with five years deducted for the period she was detained while awaiting trial. In this expressive, desolate memoir, she recreates the test to her spirit of the solitary confinement she endured for seven years: "For 576,000 minutes I was subjected to this assault... 288,000 times," she writes of the surveillance at the peephole of her cell. After her conviction, prison became marginally more endurable when she mastered the technique of "talking" to other prisoners?23 taps on the wall, for example, conveyed the letter w. At the end of this volume, Constante is moved into a communal cell?her experiences in which, she says, she will recount in another book. She also tells us that she was released in 1961 and exonerated in 1968.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Constante, an artist convicted of espionage in 1954, endured 12 years in prison in Romania. The first eight years, which she spent in solitary confinement, are the subject of this powerful and terrifying book. Constante re-creates the rituals of everyday life in prison and the brutal interrogation methods, offering gripping descriptions of physical and psychological pain. During her confinement, Constante kept her mind active by memorizing artistic compositions and learning the "language of the walls" to communicate with other prisoners. She also became engaged in intense solidarity with the other women in prison, which bolstered her will to survive. 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.?Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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