The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison

This was horrifying. I've read a number of disturbing books over the years, from histories on the Holocaust through memoirs from Japanese PoW camps in World War Two to novels in which violence, rape and sickening depravities have a prominent role. But nothing I've read has been so consistently shocking as The Damage Done.

Words like 'horrifying' don't really do it justice; you have to read it to know what I mean. Just when you think you're getting to grips with some of the nightmarish stuff which is happening (and this is a true story, remember), Fellows somehow manages to introduce another episode in which something even more appalling happens. At times I just wanted to fling the book from my hands as I was creeped out again and again. show more The cockroach bit on page 71 in particular did for me, but this was far from an isolated occurrence. It is relentless; just about every page has one of these episodes, and your soul dies a little inside with every page turn. Overall, the book is a graphic chronicle of every conceivable form of mental and physical stress, of every method of violence and torture, with just enough fragments of hope and humanity to throw the brutality and depravity into even sharper relief.

Fellows writes with a blunt and disarming honesty which spares the reader nothing. But The Damage Done is not some sort of voyeuristic thrill; Fellows is very perceptive and engaging, and talks eloquently about how one is sucked into a life of crime, how one learns to live in such unspeakably horrible environments as the Thai dungeons and how one tries to reacclimatise to normal life upon release. He freely admits his guilt and is not looking for pity, or trying to push a philosophy that you can survive anything by turning to Jesus or somesuch nonsense. At times I thought he might be embellishing some occurrences (it wouldn't be the first time in books of this sort, particularly as tall tales would be hard to disprove) but his reluctance to talk about some factors which on a cynical level would have enhanced the story (for example, his wife and son, or why he hated the Old Man so much) suggest to me that this really is a man laying his soul bare - an exorcism of sorts, with no embellishments necessary.

It's hard to enthuse about a book of this type, and to say that one 'enjoyed' it or thought it was 'fantastic' seems inappropriate, and only serves to show how words can be feeble things sometimes. If the measure of a great book is in the strength of its impact on the reader, then The Damage Done is a great book. It will deeply disturb anyone who reads it. It is certainly not for the faint-of-heart, and I would suggest that even those of a strong constitution should seriously think twice. show less

And you're all "Really, dude? 'The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison' is as good as Jude the Obscure?" Leaving aside my massive irritation with the latter book as well as the highly idiosyncratic and subjective nature of these judgments, which goes without saying, yeah, I do.

Fellows spends a lot of time on self-flagellation, which actually makes the book a bit worse. Like, we KNOW a heroin dealer is a shitty guy; we (I) can comfortably assume that if God or karma actually requires in some balancing-the-books cosmic energy way that he be punished, twelve years in Thai prison was enough. Not, what this book really was was that always-timely reminder that there are places where horrible, HORRIBLE things happen to people show more every day like it ain't no thang, and putting someone in jail isn't and must never become the same as unilaterally expelling them from the human race. I expected the filth and the disease and the going insane and the maggots under the skin. Obviously there had to be prison riots, and I was ready for extrajudicial killing. But not this much, this casually. Even in your Chinas, there seems to be acommitment to maintaining a legal sheen over the massive grinding up of social undesirables - but here, in practice, the law basically seems to be "Guards, go to town, but don't be surprised if you get the claws one day too." Like, the so-called "law" is just the law of the jungle and the recognition that in this space, it is all that applies - shades of Zizek on the Nazis. Stuff like this justifies the Amnesty Internationals of this world and their continued good work, for all their late fixation on the Bush administration.

Anther really valuable thing about this book is just how shocked and dazed Fellows comes through and out of it. Like, "I lost twelve years. Really? I lost twelve years? I didn't lose twelve years. How could I have lost twelve years? I lost twelve years." Like, taking you right up close with a wadded-up handful of your jacket and saying look man, we don't get over it. We are broken for good. He didn't get twelve years. He got life. show less

Warren Fellows is a self-confessed drug smuggler, who ended up serving 12 years in a Bangkok prison for his crime.

While I have no sympathy for drug smugglers, I believe that no matter what he did, no prison system should allow the kind of atrocities he was subjected to and witnessed during his time in prison.

A fascinating and horrifying book.

I am a fairly slow reader at times unless its very quiet at work and I get a few hours to myself. When I'm at home I tend to read in short stints rather than big sessions. Time with this book however was very different. I started it one evening and didnt go to bed until I had finished it, I just couldnt put it down and for me thats a rare thing.

Unlike some books I've read in the past on westerners in foreign jails, from the start Fellows states his guilt. Sometimes you tend to feel that when people do this they are somewhat proud of what they have done, not Fellows. Some stories of captivity in foreign jails tell of bad times but are inter-twined with the parties they have and the ease of getting things should you have the money. In show more Fellows' book there are drugs and plenty of them but at no point there is the glamourisation that sometimes occurs.

Everything is nasty, brutally violent and unrelenting. There is no break in the pace of for lighter moments and I really felt the relief he felt at the end of him time prison. Tellingly there is a large section dedicated to the time after his release and how hard he found it trying to adjust to 'normal' life again. I really got a feel of the physical prison being played out for eternity afterwards mentally.

His way of laying everything out on the table throws up some thoughts with me. He is guilty, of that there is no doubt so does he deserve what he got. He deserved to be locked up, of that there is no doubt but having no human rights is undeserved by anyone today. Its certainly a very stark contrast when compared with the sentence and punishment he would have received in the UK for example. show less

The opening few sentences of this book grab hold of you in a vice like grip and attempts to prepare the reader for what is to come. 'Think about the most wretched day of your life' the author asks the reader to contemplate, 'and then imagine 4,000 of those days together in one chunk.'

Australian drug-smuggler Warren Fellows doesn't pull any punches, nor does he ask for your sympathy. But he wants his story to be told, because reading what this man went through - no matter what his crime - leaps at you off the pages like a Thai prison warden bashing you across the head with a bamboo stick.

To read the rest of my review please visit: http://stevenscaffardi.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-damage-done-by-warren-fellows-...

Thailand.

Fellows makes a reasonable case that despite his crime, Thailand's prisons are inhumane. I don't have any reason to argue this, and he provides plenty of evidence to substantiate it. This rather grim narrative is not artful and could use an editor; however, its roughness as a narrative does contribute to its apparent sincerity and lack of artifice.

I picked this up in the Bangkok airport and although I knew it was going to be a bit sensationalized I did expect the author to take a bit more responsibility for his actions. Although I am sure the Thai prison system is no laughing matter, I do have to believe and this is confirmed from other books about the US prison system, that its problems are are not that far different from others. In a nutshell, prison is not a pretty place. While I feel sorry for those who are duped into carrying drugs into/out of Thailand, I am having a hard time feeling terribly saddened by those who calously flaunt it and then get caught. To be clear however, I do wish that all of these systems were better run and that the people subjected to them were show more reformed rather than made career criminals. That however is the subject for many other books and not part of this one. show less