"I have lived, alone, in a cell, 157,852,800 seconds of solitude and fear. Cause for screaming They sentence me to live yet another 220,838,400 seconds To live them or to die from them."--from The Silent Escape

Victim of Stalinist-era terror, Lena Constante was arrested on trumped-up charges of "espionage" and sentenced to twelve years in Romanian prisons. The Silent Escape is the extraordinary account of the first eight years of her incarceration--years of solitary confinement during which she was tortured, starved, and daily humiliated.

The only woman to have endured...