Muses of Murari

I didn’t read much of Jeffrey Archer’s books. Just the title and the blurb content of this book, teased me to spend some couple of hundred rupees to buy it. The book is not great in any sense, but it gave the glimpse of prison life. Though the prison life may not be same everywhere, but the narration in the book has thrown enough light, that how it looks like, in one of the developed countries in the world.

Jeffrey Archer wrote a series of diaries, while he was serving in prison, and released them as "A Prison Diary". This book is its first volume.

In the book, Archer described every day & every hour of his experiences, which, I felt a bit drag. To write the experiences in three volumes, you don’t have any other better options! He narrated the real experiences of prisoners and shared their stories to the world. In one instance, he told a moving story of a prisoner, who was outrageously sexually abused in his childhood, and ditched by his lover after a decade of living together and later arrested for a criminal act, which he never performed! The prisoner had to spend major part of his life in the jail. Archer appreciated for his voluntary role of a prison listener. Later, the prisoner had attempted suicide. I re-read this entire passage. I was really moved by his story. And it is unpleasant to learn the dark side of life, which many of us might never come to know, let alone experiencing it!

And there’s bit lengthy passage discussing various types of drugs like marijuana, heroin, cocaine and the author described the explanation given by a fellow prisoner, who was arrested for drug dealing. And the author pointed out, some of the unfortunate crimes committed by the prisoners, which, many of them repent for their mad acts performed in the height of craziness. The author lead the reader to peak into what the prison world look like. The reader can easily understand, from the way the author has written, that the, Time, which often we complain that we don’t have to do enough things, is available in plenty.

Overall, this first version of Jeffrey Archer’s prison diary, is not revelation of any kind, but certainly leaves the impressions of the prison life.

Related posts:

• Thoughts on “The Long Tail”
• Online book stores. Few thoughts…
• Few thoughts on “Blood and Oil”
• Thoughts on “The Kite Runner”
• “Around the world in eighty days”