4000 Days

In 1978 Warren Fellows was convicted of heroin trafficking between Thailand and Australia, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the notorious Bang Kwang prison – better known as the Bangkok Hilton. It was the beginning of 12 years of hell in a place where sewer rats and cockroaches are the only nutritious food, where prison guards laugh as they deliver pulverising blows and where the worst punishment is the khun deo – solitary confinement, Thai style. This is not Warren Fellows’ plea for forgiveness nor his denial of guilt, but a story of endurance and survival and the abuse of human rights during the decade of a life wasted in leg irons. It is an essential read: heartbreaking, fascinating and impossible to put down.