Five best books: prison writing

Martin E. Marty, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, is the author, most recently, of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 'Letters and Papers From Prison': A Biography.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books on the theme of prison writing. One book on the list:

The Consolation of Philosophy
by Boethius (sixth century)

'Get me out of here!" is the standard appeal of most prisoners. Boethius' "Consolation of Philosophy," often called the first piece of prison literature, revealed an author who did not merely want to escape his jailers but to be lifted into realms of transcendent thought. Boethius was a Christian, but his argument was philosophical, not theological. A privileged sixth-century Roman bureaucrat, he somehow raised the suspicion of the Gothic King Theodoric, who then ruled Roman lands. Theodoric arrested him and had him executed. But as he awaited the end, Boethius—who was steeped in Greek thought—wrote an imagined dialogue between a doomed, despairing prisoner and a woman who personifies Philosophy. She persuades him that even jail cannot rob him of true happiness. A useful message, given man's propensity for creating prisons for himself.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see John Mullan's list of the ten best books written in prison.

--Marshal Zeringue