Rating: Summary: Intense story of survival in prison Review: WOW! What can I say. I started to read this book and did'nt stop till I was done. A well written, gripping book about incarceration in a Thaiwanese prison. Warren Fellows goes into great detail recalling the pain and injustices he survived while in what could best be decribed as hell on earth. I wont spill any beans here, go and get this book, you will not regret it. I will probably read it agin soon it was so good.
Rating: Summary: To hell and back in 4000 Days Review: This book allows the reader to take a horrific journey to hell and back. This book takes the reader through 4000 days of torture which cannot even be described, but only to say you will never forget Warrens story. After reading this book (which only took a few hours to complete) I find myself appreciating life more. I have learned to appreciate the little things that most of us take for granted. This book grabs you by the throat and holds on for the entire time. The only thing more disturbing than actually reading this book, is that fact that someone actually lived it.
Rating: Summary: This is the sum of 12 years in a prison? Review: This is more of a outline for a book than anything else. Its hard to believe that this guy wrote about 4000 days in a Thai jail and had so little to say. There is very little detail to what went on day to day or even about the author's life inside. He says that he became very good friends with a man from New York, but he mets this guy, gets to be pals with him and then the guy from NY dies in the space of just one or two pages. He never even gives a clear understanding of his Thai language skills or the relationship between the Thais and the foriegners. A reader above said that the writing was "flawless". No way, I am a very poor writer and have most likely made many mistakes in what your reading now. So think about it.. If a guy like me found errors in it, you know its bad.
Rating: Summary: I was a heroin smuggler but ... Review: This book gave me ambiguous feelings. On the one hand, the brutality of the Thailand prisons, even as recent as 1989, is astonishing. Torture is wrong. Kicking people to near death and then letting them die slowly is wrong. Letting cockroaches make nests and grow under their skin is wrong. Fellows does not hide the fact that he was smuggling a large amount of heroin from Thailand to Australia and was imprisoned for that. He says several times that he does not feel sorry for himself. Yet, to me the story had a strange flavor of his still not fully accepting responsibility for himself and the horror of supplying heroin. He still does sound like he thinks of himself as an "innocent" victim of the big evil world. The book could have been better balanced by giving more of a flaver of prision life when people were not being tortured, more of the day to day stuff. I'm glad he survived and wrote the book. I hope his book helps somehow to put pressure on Thailand to reform their prision system. And I hope his book helps at least some "innocent" people from not becoming smugglers.
Rating: Summary: A rare account from the inside of hell Review: One might be tempted to discount Warren Fellows's account of the decade plus he spent in a Bangkok prison. After all, he deserved to be arrested and imprisoned for his actions as a drug smuggler. What he did not deserve was to spend time in the hell on earth that is the Thai prison system. The first hand accounts of the conditions are startlingly brutal and ring absolutely true. Forget about the exploitative Hollywood film made about this subject last year. This is the real deal in the same vein as "Midnight Express."
Rating: Summary: Everyone should read this book Review: When I first started reading this book, I was sickened and wanted to quit. But now I'm glad I read it. I was unaware of this poor treatment in Asian prisons, and I think conditions should be improved. But of course there is nothing I can do about it, so I will always remember that I don't want to go through what Warren went through and keep myself out of prison. This is a very good auto-biography...
Rating: Summary: St. Martin's Press - Another Fakery? Review: This book has more and more improbable happenings strung together. In fact, so many I quit reading halfway through the book. Did anybody see the 60 Minutes segment about St Martin's Press in Feb. '00? The Editor in Chief admitted to Lelsly Stahl that his publishing company does NO fact checking of any kind, nor any research into the writer's background. This is the same sort of fiction that was done in their G.W. Bush biography, which the company later pulled from distribution. Unfortunatly, no one is going to bother to do the basic fact checking to disprove Fellow's rather unbelievable happenings. Don't fall for it.
Rating: Summary: Does anyone deserve to be treated like this? Review: What a wonderful book. It made me cry, laugh and feel sick. A great insight into what this man had to endure in order to survive the punishment that was given to him for his crime. Even though what he did was wrong and he freely admits to this you can't help but feel that the punishment didn't really fit the crime.IT WOULD CERTAINLY PUT ANY ONE OFF DRUG SMUGGLING! A great read, highly recommended.
Rating: Summary: sorry i missed this bit out! Review: just for the record...the book title in England is "The damage done"...not 4000 days, just in case you were wondering! ;)
Rating: Summary: For the reviewer who said warren deserves all he gets! Review: Firstly, i have to react to the imbicile who tried to reconcile himself by saying that warren only got a quarter of what he deserved....to all those thinking of buying the book, not once does warren suggest that he wasn't guilty of his crime, not once does he wallow in self pity (until realese! ) about his crime, he tries to take the time like a man......please read the book and then ask yourself " would i of coped?"....this is truly one great book, not for its literally presence but for its sheer readabilty, it will shock you, make you laugh even reduce you to tears......but the most important thing it will do....it will make you think once, twice three four or five times about committing similar crimes...be warned!
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