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4,000 Days: My Life and Survival in a Bangkok Prison
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Product Description
Fellows, convicted in Thailand, spent these twelve years in Bangkok's infamous Bang Kwang prison, witnessing atrocities committed by both prison officials and his fellow inmates. He survived countless torturous beatings, was forced to eat rats, and endured solitary confinement under terrifyingly inhumane conditions. On a daily basis, Fellows also witnessed the torture and execution of those around him, their screams as common as the insects and vermin in his cell. Many of the prisoners in Bang Kwang turned to heroin--the vice that landed Fellows there in the first place--to escape their daily nightmares, and the prison guards often helped feed this deadly addiction.
Fellows, now a free man, has lived to write about these twelve ghastly years. He has captured the filth, pain, anger, hopelessness, and torture of life in a Thai prison with vivid, engrossing detail and brutal honesty.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #211193 in Books
- Published on: 2000-04-01
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Survivors' tales are almost always dramatic, and Fellows's, though often stalled in mediocre writing, is no different. In 1978, at the age of 25, the Australian was convicted for heroin trafficking between his country and Thailand. Sentenced to serve the rest of his life in prison, Fellows spent 12 years in Thai prisons, each one more atrocious than the next. He recounts in stomach-wrenching detail how the Thai guards forced him to crawl through a pool of sewage, and how he routinely watched such horrors as guards caning prisoners to death. He also tells of how he turned to heroin, partly to alleviate his loneliness and desperation, and of how guards turned a blind eye to the infraction. While Fellows's account isn't nearly as riveting as Billy Hayes's Midnight Express and suffers from jumbled passages and poor structure, it proves compelling and certainly buttresses his point that "there is nothing more precious than a free life." Fellows argues?strongly?that no crime warrants the dehumanizing punishment to which he was subjected.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Warren Fellows is now forty-four years old and has been a free man since his return from Thailand in 1989. He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his mother.
Customer Reviews
4,000 Days: My Anti-Drug
This book is the best out of the "white person imprisoned in the Asian hellhole with tragic results" category that is practically requisite reading when you're on the Southeast Asian backpacker circuit. 4,000 Days delivers what it promises- it's an interesting read and you won't be able to get a lot of the imagery out of your head.
Mr. Fellows is obviously not the smartest cookie in the world and his writing reflects this, but I still think it's worthwhile to read this book. Especially if you have food poisoning in Cambodia or if you're thinking about smuggling opium out of Myanmar so you can afford to tighten your dreads on Khao San Road.
FULL of lies!!! Completely unbelieveable.
The book starts out with a horrible urban myth but set inside this prison. A prisoner is screaming in pain, they hold him still and see his skin wriggling, and out pop worms!!! Seems roaches laid eggs in his skin somehow, and we all know that baby roaches are worms, right? Puh lease. This set the stage for unbelievability. I learned that nothing was his fault, and he was a do gooder cruisading to help fellow prisoners at every turn. I threw this out after reading about half of it. I want my money back.
Great read
Although Warren Fellows book comes off as not that well written (in an english sense), his story definitely makes up for it. I worked in a prison for over a year in the US and it is so hard to believe that there are actually prisons out there that make people feel so bad. Prisons in the USA are like a luxery to stay at compared to this. His story will captivate you and you will not want to put the book down. It is a very quick read, and unfortunately it will make you want more and more (where can I get more!?!?!). Definitely check this one out. Don't smuggle drugs in Thailand...that's for sure!
