Sentence: Ten Years and a Thousand Books in Prison

A memoir of a decade in prison by a well-educated young addict known as the Apologetic Bandit

In 2003 Daniel Genis, the son of a famous Soviet émigré writer, broadcaster, and culture critic, was fresh out of NYU when he faced a serious heroin addiction that led him into debt and ultimately crime. After he was arrested for robbing people at knifepoint, he was nicknamed the "Apologetic Bandit" in the press, given his habit of expressing regret to his victims as he took their cash. He was sentenced to twelve years--ten with good behavior, a decade he survived by reading 1,046 books, taking up weightlifting, having philosophical discussions with his fellow inmates, working at a series of prison jobs, and in general observing an existence for which nothing in his life had prepared him.

Genis describes in unsparing and vivid detail the realities of daily life in the New York penal system. In his journey from Rikers Island and through a series of upstate institutions, he encounters violence on an almost daily basis, while learning about the social strata of gangs, the "court" system that sets geographic boundaries in prison yards, how sex was obtained, the workings of the black market in drugs and more practical goods, the inventiveness required for everyday tasks such as cooking, and how debilitating solitary confinement actually is--all while trying to preserve his relationship with his wife, whom he recently married.

Written with empathy and wit, Sentence is a strikingly powerful memoir of the brutalities of prison and how one man survived them, leaving its walls with this book inside him, "one made of pain and fear and laughter and lots of other books."

Author: Daniel Genis
Publisher: Viking
Published: 02/22/2022
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.30d
ISBN13: 9780525429555
ISBN10: 0525429557
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- Biography & Autobiography | Criminals & Outlaws
- Literary Criticism | General

About the Author
Daniel Genis was born in New York City and graduated from NYU with degrees in History and French. He has worked as a translator and has written for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Paris Review's The Daily, The Washington Post, Vice, Deadspin, and New York Daily News.