Man in a Room

Abstract

Man in a Room is a novel in the avant-garde tradition about a man trapped in solitary confinement. The novel is told in the form of a numbered legal plea as the protagonist attempts to argue for his release from solitary into the general prison population. The novel is based on the Silverstein Declaration, a similar document written by Thomas Silverstein, at the time the longest-held prisoner in solitary by the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons. Man in a Room reflects on the maltreatment of prisoners in the Federal Bureu of Prisons and the meaning of a life lost in isolation.