Taylor and Francis Coetzee, J: Fallen Walls

This collection of prison writings straddles two continents, and compares and contrasts the political struggles that gave birth to two vibrant new democracies of the twenty-first century: South Africa and the Cech Republic. The triumph over decades of suffering endured by the ordinary citiens of these two countries is symbolied by their leaders, Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. Fallen Walls focuses on the experiences of ordinary prisoners of conscience. It records three voices from the apartheid-era cells of Robben Island and three voices from communist-era prisons in Cechoslovakia. There are striking similarities as well as differences between the two sets of stories.