"Desai is asking South Africa (including himself) to scrutinize new and old histories. The history of the victors laid down in the new history books and political discourses that dominate South Africa today. The history being made and remade now."----Peter Dwyer The prison authorities on the apartheid South African Robben Island were obsessed with censoring the news that prisoners could receive of the outside world. Through the memories and biographical accounts written by former political inmates, the book evocatively brings to life the voices of prisoners. Ashwin Desaiteaches at the Workers' College in Durban, South Africa. Desai is also the author of the acclaimed We ARE the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid Africa.