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Comment by cghendrix | Hacker News Reader

If anyone finds this especially interesting, you should read 4000 Days by Warren Fellows. It’s an Australian man’s own self account of his time spent in horrific conditions while incarcerated within a Bangkok prison after getting caught smuggling in heroin. Very easy and engrossing read.

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In a very similar vein: a book by an Australian author called “Shanataram”, based on his life, but one would imagine the definite use of an artistic license.

Man escapes prison in Australia for drugs, ends up in India in the slums in the 80s and fights in Afghanistan against the Russians, after working for the Indian Mafia.

Shantaram is incredible, I can only think of the original Dune novels by Frank Herbert as comparable in depth, scope and revelation of what it is to be human.

Shantaram's author claims use of artistic license in names, character descriptions and details, in order to protect those described from repercussions. Reading the extraordinary story and arc, and subsequently learning of the fact that later in real life the author later went on to marry into Czech royalty, it's easy to believe it as a fundamentally true account.

Great book, very entertaining. But it felt more like fiction than fact to me. Just an opinion.

The ending was total fiction.

Or the classic Papillion; the film version(s) are pretty good as well (there's a fairly recent 2017 film version starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek, but it's a remake of the 70's version, iirc uses the same screenplay). It's about the author spending years in French prison camps in Guyana, iirc early last century.

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