Brother One Cell: Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons

Brother One Cell: Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons

by Cullen Thomas

Sidgwick & Jackson, $180

On the way to pick up a parcel of hashish he has sent to a fictitious name at a poste restante in South Korea, Cullen Thomas snaps at his girlfriend who is urging him to fulfil his promise to start writing seriously: 'I'll write when I feel like I've got something to share.' Prophetic words. No sooner has Thomas signed for the dope and started to leave than a voice rings out: 'Korean police.' Caught red-handed, with little hope of mercy from the South Korean justice system and even less assistance from his lawyer, Thomas' fate is sealed.

Prison memoirs, which add a measure of genuine horror to the voyeurism of biography, hold a firm place in literature, but Brother One Cell is in a different class to such classics as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. Thomas, sentenced to 31/2 years, is transformed by his experiences from a freebooting twentysomething punk (a 'jolly marauder', to use his term) into an older, wiser and more mature human being.

Thomas writes with integrity and vision, no doubt a result of the long hours of introspection granted by his incarceration. At times he was locked up in solitary for 23 hours a day. It's to his credit that the callow youth who seeks out the cannabis dealers in the Philippines doesn't come across as very likeable - so much so that it's a wonder his girlfriend, the deliciously feisty Rocket, stuck with him for so long.