It’s Sunday evening, and I finally have a chance to tell you about the book I finished this weekend. My book club met yesterday to discuss Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre, and it was one of the best discussions we’ve ever had. This book presents details of the prisoners who were held as POWs in the “elite” prison of Colditz Castle between 1940 and 1945, along with their many escape attempts, some successful, others decidedly not. I’ve always enjoyed Macintyre’s books, which for me have mainly been stories of espionage, spies and double-agents, and at first, this one seemed to not much more than a catalogue of escape attempts, but as the book went on, the prisoners became real as we learned about them, their backgrounds, their many skills before and during their imprisonment, and their relationships and interactions with other prisoners and officials and guards. These characters, too, became not just two-dimensional stereotypes of German prison officials and guards but real people who had difficult jobs to do during extremely difficult times. There were eight of us at the meeting, probably the first time we’ve all been able to make it out to a meeting in… maybe a year or more. We all loved the way that Macintyre was able to infuse so much humour into this anything-but-humourous story, and we were astounded at the way he could take so much information about so many people and historical events and mesh it all together to make one coherent story that flowed seamlessly into an unputdownable book that was both entertaining and educational. We were beyond impressed with the ingenuity of the prisoners and the various schemes they came up with to try to escape. We learned so much about this prison and these characters, these people who endured years there as both guards and prisoners, officials and orderlies. One of my group members was reluctant to read this because she was a young girl in Holland during WWII and she worried that it much be too difficult to read, and others also expressed their initial reluctance to read it due to the seriousness of the topic, but they were all glad they read it, and some are planning to share their books with other family members and friends. We also talked about some new words that we learned, "escapologist" (one who studies escape techniques) and deutschfeindlich ("German-unfriendly"). All in all, it was a most successful discussion, and I would highly recommend this or any other book by Ben Macintyre if you’re looking for a well-written non-fiction selection.
Not finished the Chris Hadfield audiobook yet, but over halfway there, so maybe next week…
