The World Is a Prison

The World Is a Prison is Guglielmo Petroni's story of survival and growth, an account of his experiences and a meditation on their meaning for himself, for his compatriots, and for an entire country. Terror, uncertainty, the fear of death, and the brutality he encounters at nearly every turn are all described in concrete terms, but the author's restrained tone, informed by a sense of paradox and the absurd, conveys a depth of feeling that makes this prison memoir all the more remarkable.

Guglielmo Petroni was born in 1911 in Lucca, Italy, and died in 1993 after a distinguished literary career. The World Is a Prison has been almost continuously in print in Italy since first being published in 1948. Italian critics consider it to be Petroni's masterpiece.