Jack Mapanje's memoir is the moving account of his imprisonment by the Malawian state and his struggle to probe the hidden motives behind his arrest.

In 1981, Mapanje was a budding poet and scholar; his first collection of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods, had just been published in the prestigious African Writers Series, and his work on linguistics was having an impact on language and literary studies in central Africa and beyond. Just two years later, however, the government ordered the withdrawal of his poetry from all bookshops, libraries, and institutions of learning. And in September 1987, he was arrested and held without charge for nearly four years.

This book recalls those prison years as Mapanje records in his unique voice the terror of arrest, the reality of incarceration, and his daily struggle to retain a solid measure of sanity and spiritual freedom.