Sticking to the point would be advisable to some..

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	• Midnight Express Billy Hayes, William Hoffer Time Warner Paperbacks, 1987 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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Sticking to the point would be advisable to some..

This legendary book (and later movie of the same caliber) has provoked and is still provoking so much off the point debate that it's hard to fathom.

A discussion about Turkey and its pros and cons belongs either in a different forum or upon a different book as a vehicle for argumentation. Even Hayes himself despite his martyrdom had said publicly after his escape to the States that his intention had never been a defamation of Turkey or the Turks. So lets leave it at that.

To the book itself, this is indeed a momumental reading describing the utter and surreal ordeal that Hayes, a convicted hash smuggler endured while incarcerated in the Turkish prison system. He describes a system which was designed (or left to its own devices?) to devalue human existence and destroy human dignity. In conditions mildly called appalling, Hayes went through 5 years of sheer soul and bodily torture until his incredible and unlikely escape which spared him life imprisonment.

He himself spares the reader none of all the disturbing details and descriptions as he unravels his nightmarish narrative. The Midnight Express is a book that punches hard at the incarceration system (as prisons in many other parts of the world are similar or worse) and the sheer disregard for human dignity. Credit to Hayes for not trying to redeem himself by claiming wrongful conviction. He accepts that he commited a crime according to that country's law and that he knew he was as he was commiting it. He doesnt accept (to put it again, VERY mildly) the severety of the penalty and the way it was carried out.

It's a book that will no doubt unnerve the reader who's unfamiliar with such literature or who's never given much thought to such issues. It's a scary experience even as an innocent turning of pages and will keep you hostage with its gloomy, borderline deathly and insane atmosphere. It will also provide some serious food for thought about the limits of human perseverence as a whole.

Written in a very direct and engaging style, Hayes proved a talent in writting and if you've read other such books you know that not everyone could achieve the level of directness and the effect of making you feel other the way he did.

Worthy of its fame by any standard. For anyone interested in a similar and perhaps even more disturbing book try the "Damage done" by Warren Fellows.

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EXCELLENT

I COULDN'T READ THIS BOOK FAST ENOUGH. IT HAD ME ENTRALLED FROM PAGE ONE AND I HAD ALREADY SEEN THE MOVIE. OUR PRISONS ARE CAKE COMPARED TO OTHER PLACES IN THE WORLD. EXCELLENT BOOK!

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Has its moments, but nothing too deep.

Basically, this book tells an interesting story of a drug-dabbling hippie who runs afoul of the Turks and pays a toll that is very arguably high for the crime that he commits. The narrative is a bit simple and lacking in detail/insight, but this book was never intended to be anything too deep - it was created for mass appeal and sales. Also, it's an interesting counterpoint to the movie of the same title.

Now for a bit of sidebar discussion - as with most of these sorts of stories (ie, those that are told from the prisoner's point of view), the prisoner is portrayed in a sympathetic light to the point of distorting/clouding the fact that he commited a crime, and a serious one at that. And while I'm not one to suggest that the author didn't pay for his crime and then some (and then some more), or that he didn't get an EXTREMELY raw deal in light of his transgression, let's face it - he was a damned fool for trying to smuggle drugs through this (or any other, for that matter, but especially this) part of the world. Turkey ain't Western Europe or Scandavia even by the standards of our times (forget about 1970!) when it comes to treating drug smugglers leniently. All one has to do is to be an occasional reader of news to realize that the countries of the Middle East (and let's assume for the sake of the present argument that Turkey is one of them) and Asia will thoroughly skull-thump those who think they can get away with this crime in their neck of the woods (and who don't have the connections to scam themselves out of being caught in the event that they ARE caught -- but that's another topic.) One would have to be a damned idiot, no, a damned NAIVE idiot to merely consider doing what Hayes attempted. And we haven't even broached the subject of Hayes REALLY intended to do with that hash if he had gotten to the USA with it, or how many lives may have been negatively affected by that hash had it reached the US.

To paraphrase Hayes himself -- don't mess with drugs, and definitely don't mess with drugs in the Middle East/Asia...the authorities there will come down hard on your little hippie heinie!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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