Writings From a Greek Prison: 32 Steps, or Correspondence From the House of the Dead

Even though I did not commit the offences for which I am accused, I am not innocent. I committed the one offense that includes all others. I am an anarchist. In the class war, I chose the side of the excluded and the underprivileged, the prosecuted and the accursed, the poor, the weak, and the oppressed.

Writings from a Greek Prison is a literary work of biting realism. Tasos Theofilou gives testimony on the brutality of prison life, and its centrality in contemporary capitalism, through a blur of memoir, social commentary, free verse, and a glossary of the idiom used by inmates in Greek prisons.

A political prisoner in Greece from 2012 to 2017, Theofilou’s work centers on exposing the conditions of widespread exploitation and social struggle that persist in Greece as a result of the debt crisis—in prisons as well as in mainstream society.