"The narrator, the prisoner, is alone in his cell. Why is he there? He doesn't know. How long has he been there? He is unsure about that too. He is hanging on; desperately trying to keep in touch with reality. The prisoner's body is deteriorating. It is attacked by abcesses that make movement more and more painful, and confine the prisoner at last to his straw pallet. There he lies, and thinks and dreams...about his job as a teacher before he came to the prison...about the time when he was allowed exercise in the yard...above all, about Alban, who once inhabited the next door cell, and with whom he communicated by as series of taps. Horst Bienek has written a novel that conveys brilliantly the effect on the mind of prolonged solitary confinement. It is a search analysis of time and memory, and above all, a passionate affirmation of the survival of the human spirit"--Taken from dust jacket.