'My own books, Jimmy Boyle's diaries, Jeffrey Archer's Prison Diaries – even though everyone is scathing about what he writes – and Jonathan Aitken's Porridge and Passion are all popular. 'Despite the high rates of illiteracy – 60% across the board – books about prison are very popular with prisoners, just as films about prison are,' he said. I trust her' – but the judgment on Gabriel García Márquez was blunt: 'That man is a liar'.Įrwin James, who has detailed his own experiences of imprisonment in the UK in his journalism and memoirs including A Life Inside, said that strangely enough, inmates like to read prison memoirs. Flannery O'Connor's portrait got a positive verdict – 'She looks kind of busted up, y'know? She ain't too pretty. Participants in Steinberg's women's writing group insisted on checking out an author's photo before they would read the book, with interesting reactions. The prisoners' book choices are suggestive: Anne Frank was effectively coping with incarceration in her Amsterdam attic, and Plath is an obvious choice for those less than contented with their lot. Prisoners weren't there to transform themselves, or be transformed – but they would still come to the library.' 'It happened in some instances but they were notable exceptions.

'Transformation was not necessarily the main story,' he reflects.

Steinberg's experiences seem to have made him somewhat wary of the notion that books have the power to transform – not least after the occasion when he was mugged in a park by an ex-con who boasted that he'd still got two overdue titles that Steinberg had issued to him.

Running the books by avi steinberg