This is absolutely crazy, I had no idea that hostage memoirs, or captivity narratives, was even a genre. I can't even imagine what something like that would be like, and can't ever see myself really reading about it either. Wood's review is enough for me.

Wood quotes the enlightenment that Padnos experienced: "You can see everything. Why to the living struggle and sweat, you wonder, when all they really need to do is to live?" This is a very beautiful quote and gives us a lot to think about. Poor guy. The Checkov passage that Wood quotes was amazingly beautiful, though:

I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.