3,096 Days

A riveting audiobook chronicling the 8 years of captivity of a girl in Austria abducted at age 10. The main thread of the story involved her psychological survival, day after day, year after year. I knew she escaped at some point, but the question of how and where kept me engrossed.

One way she held on to her sanity was by keeping a calendar and a diary, and even forgiving her captor. Sounds strange, but forgiveness was one way of looking down on this pathetic man and seeing herself as stronger.

She rejects the idea of Stockholm Syndrome. Though she saw the world as surreal at times, she never completely lost touch with reality or became a zombie. She always knew her situation, her real name, and her promise to escape when she turned 18. show more She was deeply wounded but not broken.

After her escape, many people sent her love and support. But many others were critical and nasty, wounding her further. (Welcome back to the real world, Natascha!)

An entrancing psychological read and highly recommended! show less

In march of 1998 the ten year old Natascha disappears on her way to school in a suburb to Vienna. The search is intense for a couple of months, after which the girl is presumed dead. But Natascha is alive, kept prisoner in a five square meter room in a sound isolated basement behind two thick concrete doors and a hidden corridor. Her abductor is Wolfgang Priklopil, a young man suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia. Eight years later Natascha manages to escape, upon which Priklopil promptly kills himself. Her fate becomes a ruthless media craze, and she is more or less forced under ground again. This book is her own account of the years in imprisonment.

This is a quick, gruesome and deeply fascinating read. Natascha describes the show more years in Priklopil’s basement without sentiment, and with an impressive amount of analysis. She describes in horrid detail how her “role” changed over time from pampered child to work slave to “wife”, the violence, the terror, the psychological torture – food, sleep and light deprivation, altering of reality, manipulation of memory. But also more complex aspects: how Natascha managed to keep some feeling of superiority towards her prisoner over all the years and how high the threshold to escape actually was.

Perhaps most interesting is her description of the evolving, complicated relationship to Priklopil. She sharply denounces the idea of Stockholm Syndrome, meaning that such a label takes away her right to interpret her experience. She talks about how Priklopil was the only person she met for eight years, and that despite the violence and terror, there was also a mutuality there that was necessary for her survival. And there were “good times” too. In the end, after her release, this unwillingness to talk about absolute evil, the victim refusing to play the role of victim, is what the media has a hard time handling, and she faces some rather appalling aggressiveness as a result.

A strong young woman with a unique story – and a book that won’t make you feel like a dirty scavenger for reading it. Recommended. show less

I chose this book from a pile at the monthly Beijing Bookswap because there was little else that grabbed me and I was short of time. Not at all my usual type of book, I suspected it would be another of the growing genre of misery memoirs and I was quite prepared to abandon reading if it didn't grab me. However, I found that right from the beginning of the bookNatascha's strong personality was evident, and she told her story clearly with a remarkably unemotional style. I was struck by how, only a few years after her ordeal ended she was able to look back so dispassionately, and analyse both her childhood self and her abductor with such mature clarity. Although I realise she had help writing this book I thought her real voice came through show more clearly, and she is an impressive young woman - not a victim, a survivor. This book will certainly add to the understanding of how human beings cope with solitary confinement, sensory deprivation and psychological trauma. I wish her well in the rest of her life. show less

Natascha Kampusch was 10 years old in 1998 when, walking to school alone for the first time, she was grabbed and thrown into a white delivery van. She was kept prisoner, mostly in a “dungeon” underground in her kidnapper’s house for 8 years before she escaped.

This is the first kidnapping story that I remember being so blown up in the media. (Sadly, there have been a number of them since). For those who are squeamish about sex/rape, she leaves this out; it doesn’t actually sound like there was a lot of that, anyway. There is plenty of physical abuse, though.

It is a translation, so there is the occasional awkward phrase or sentence, but I was certainly interested in her story. I think it gave a really good insight into how show more dependent she was on her kidnapper, especially since she was with him during those formative years between the ages of 10 and 18, and why she might have mixed feelings towards him. I feel so badly that she was not always treated well after she escaped due to those mixed feelings towards her former captor.

Something interesting about this book that I’ve not seen before (though I don’t have a Smartphone, so couldn’t take advantage of them) were the QR codes for more information at the end of each chapter. The book was published in 2010, so it’s possible the codes may not work anymore. However, as with many true crime stories I read, I had to look up more information online to find out how she’s been doing since the book was published. show less

I don't even know how to rate a book like this? It's kinda like "ah, no, your story wasn't good enough for me, but thanks for trying". Which obviously isn't the case. It's a horrible story, but well told I suppose.

I am very impressed by her attitude of not wanting to be reduced to a weak victim abused by a horrible monster, but instead pointing out that while everything that happened was wrong, the criminal was still human and had his good sides as well as the many bad ones. I'm appalled by the response this attitude has generated from the general public: and I've read that in her most recent interviews she said that she was not comfortable with other people and had stopped studying. I just can't believe that people are willing to turn show more on someone like her just because she doesn't fit her narrow definition of a victim.

I've been wanting to read this book for a while, and I'm happy she got to tell her story her way. I do hope everything works out for the best for her in the end, and that people stop being assholes. show less

How do you begin to rate or review something so personal?

This book was hard to get through, not only because of the content but also the writing style. It was at hard times to follow and she seemed to contradict her experiences throughout. She spends multiple pages vehemently denying she has suffered from Stockholm syndrome all the while saying how evil but kind her kidnapper was.

A huge portion of the book is dedicated to her "difficult" childhood. From someone who suffered so much later it was rather strange to hear some of her complaints of her childhood. "I was now 5 years old and I had gone from being a cheerful toddler to an insecure, taciturn person who no longer liked life."

I cannot begin to imagine the difficulty of writing of show more such experiences so I don't want to sound harsh but many things felt glossed over about her times in captivity. show less

An incredible memoir of survival. Mrs.Kampusch details her years spent in captivity and explains how she finally managed to break free. She has a lot of insight into the psychological aspects of her experience and she never portraits herself as a victim. Nevertheless it is heartbreaking to imagine a young child locked in a basement by some crazy man. This is a story that will stay with me for a while.