"Everything in this book is fictional and everything is true. I have tried through literary creation to convey the general significance and human content of a personal experience."

In this novel, there is no hero unless the prison, this terrible machine, is the hero. It refers to all the people who are crushed in this dark corner of society. The exceptional aesthetics and spiritual qualities of this novel do not lose anything from the fact that it is protest literature, very revealing even for today's problems. Shortly before he died, Serge wrote that nothing has been done about the problem of crime and prisons since the time Victor Hugo raised his voice. Very little has changed since then.