The Life Inside

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What to expect

SOON TO BE A BBC DRAMA, 'WAITING FOR THE OUT'

An Irish Times and The i Book of the Year
'Tense and intimate . . . an education' – Geoff Dyer
'Authentic, fascinating and deeply moving' – Terry Waite

Andy West teaches philosophy in prisons. Every time he steps behind bars, he also confronts his inherited shame: his father, uncle and brother all spent time inside. While Andy has built a different life for himself, he still fears that their fate will also be his.

Every day he has conversations with prisoners about their lives, discusses their ideas and feelings, and listens as they explore new ways to think about their situation. Together they tackle the big questions: Can someone in prison be more free than someone outside? Would we ever be good if we never felt shame? What makes a person worthy of forgiveness? As he discusses pressing questions of truth, identity and hope with his students, Andy searches for his own form of freedom too.

Moving, sympathetic, wise and frequently funny, The Life Inside is an elegantly written and unforgettable memoir. Through exquisite storytelling and gentle philosophical questioning, it offers a new insight into our stretched justice system, our failing prisons and the complex lives being lived inside.

'Inspiring' – The Observer
'Enriching, sobering and at times heartrending' - Lenny Henry
'A remarkable insight into prison life' – Amanda Brown
'Expands both heart and mind' – Ciaran Thapar
'A fascinating and enlightening journey . . . A legitimate page-turner' – 3:AM Magazine

Critics Review

The wisdom plus lived experience on display in this book are by turns enriching, sobering and at times, heartrending. A tale centering on our inner critic or executioner and how to stifle its constant sniping. A wonder.
Lenny Henry
Andy West powerfully interweaves an account of teaching philosophy in prison with his own family’s history of imprisonment, creating an intellectually thrilling memoir of freedom and constraint. West reminds us that thinking, debating, and learning are not luxuries but crucial for survival, urgent inquiries into who we are.
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
Andy West’s tense and intimate book is an education - a completely unsentimental and, for that reason, a compassionate and moving one. At its heart is an appeal against the life sentence handed down by Larkin in ‘This Be The Verse’. The Life Inside deserves the widest possible readership.
Geoff Dyer
Andy West bears witness to life inside prison, weaving philosophical questions about free will, forgiveness, guilt and shame, with family history and the realities of incarceration. Beautifully written – honest, painful, absurd and sometimes joyful – The Life Inside reveals how people survive.
Caitlin Davies, author of Queens of the Underworld
A book that every thinking person should read.
Simon Critchley, author of Continental Philosophy
An authentic, fascinating and deeply moving story about the different ways people search for freedom.
Terry Waite
The Life Inside is an honest, delicate memoir that doubles as an accessible handbook of philosophical ideas. It expands both heart and mind; I’ll never think about prisons - let alone my own freedom and family - the same way again.
Ciaran Thapar, author of Cut Short
An astonishingly necessary book: a thoughtful and clear sighted reflection on what it means to be human in a society obsessed with punishment and incarceration. It is an intricate exploration of the ways in which society shames and punishes us, and the ways in which we then punish ourselves. West’s deeply philosophical reflection on his work as an educator in the prison system brilliantly dispels damaging myths about those whose lives are lived inside and whose lives are consequently flattened by society in so many ways. This book embraces humanity and complexity in a manner that so few descriptions of prisons do. It challenges all of us to think more deeply about empathy, forgiveness, love and shame, and I urge everyone to read it.
Lucia Osborne-Crowley
It’s a rare feat for anyone who works in a prison to capture the smell, the flavour and the taste of the fetid air they share with the prisoners in a book. So rare I can’t think of anyone who has managed it as well as Andy West in this raw and utterly authentic account of his role as a prison philosophy teacher. More and more compelling with every turn of the page, his interactions with his students reveal his own deep and often disturbing inner truths as well as theirs. A great resource for self-reflection and rational thinking.
Erwin James, author of Redeemable
Written with compassion and searing honesty.
The Tablet
An incredible feat of thoughtfulness. Andy West sensitively weaves together memoir, hopefulness, scrutiny of systemic injustice and philosophy, both taught and lived, into a work that’s both humane and unflinching.
Eleanor Gordon-Smith, author of Illogical Stories and Murder and Morality in Victorian Britain
These are tender, complicated relationships, and there is candour and wisdom - and no little courage - in how West shows them to us.
The New Humanist
West incorporates philosophical, descriptive, and psychological elements as with a fine Dickensian brush he paints a picture of the gritty details of prison life... profoundly moving.
Philosophy Now

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