Prisoners of the Castle

Structure: ★★★ Prose: ★★★★ Pacing: ★★★★★ Intrigue: ★★★★★ Logic: ★★★★★ Enjoyment: ★★★★★Rating: ★★★★½Prisoners of the Castle offers unique perspectives from WWII that can be heartwarming, heartbreaking and optimistic, all at the same time.When this was chosen as a book club pick I expected to read a harrowing tale filled with melancholy characters and horrific interactions. Instead, we see a sliver of hope and humanity in a faraway castle during one of the world's darkest times. We follow dozens of POWs, German soldiers and other notable characters in relation to Colditz throughout the length of the war and its aftermath. The reader gets to witness every escape attempt, visit every secret room or tunnel, and learn the outcome of dozens of soldiers who entered the castle. The structure of the story quickly jumped from one person's story to another, which was hard to follow sometimes, but followed a chronological timeline that helped recenter the reader along the way.In conclusion, I really want Wes Anderson to make a Colditz movie, but I fear the prisonbreak scene from Grand Budapest Hotel will be the best homage we get to the whimsy of the castle.

An epic story of survival, class wars and daring escapes: inside the fortress walls of Colditz Castle

Macintyre's latest nonfiction thriller transports us inside this notorious Nazi prison. He suggests that prisoner boredom partly explains why there were more attempted escapes from Colditz than any other camp. And this helped inspire the supreme levels of ingenuity and invention accompanying those efforts.

What's refreshing is that he tells the story of castle characters covering many nationalities. Not only that but he details the toxic British class system that overrode everything in the prison.

A mixture of derring-do and a vivid, warts-and-all portrayal of the iconic castle.

I listened to the abridged version on BBC Sounds.