.jpg) First edition (US) | |
| Author | John David Morley |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction,Prison literature,Philosophical |
| Publisher | André Deutsch,The Atlantic Monthly Press |
Publication date | 1986 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 212 pp (US edition) |
| ISBN | 0-233-97978-6 (UK)ISBN 0-87113-070-X (US) |
In the Labyrinth (1986) is a novel byJohn David Morley.
Based on months of taped conversation with its real-life protagonist,[1][2]In the Labyrinth is the fictionalized memoir of Hungarian-born, German businessman Josef Pallehner who, due tobureaucratic inertia and his own guilty conscience, gets lost for six years in a maze of easternCzechoslovak prisons in the wake of theSecond World War.
"Morley's calm yet moving narrative is a fine tribute to a man who endured six years in prison because he lived at a time and place when borders — and his citizenship — changed at the instigation of governments," wrote Elisabeth Anderson inThe Times.[3] "In the Labyrinth is marked by great elegance of style",Carolyn See commented inThe Los Angeles Times Book Review: "It continues traditions set byKafka’sIn the Penal Colony andCummings’The Enormous Room."[1] "The cumulative effect of reading John David Morley’sIn The Labyrinth is heartbreak," declared Gillian Greenwood inThe Times: "The dispassionate, observant tone of the book gives great power to its sad and appalling testimony."[2] "In the Labyrinth is stark and melancholy, the spectrum deliberately limited to wintry monotone," noted Robert Taylor inThe Boston Globe', adding that the narrative "combines elements ofKafka nightmare and the nether world ofDostoevsky'sHouse of the Dead."[4] "When faction is as finely wrought, as articulate and principled as John David Morley's," judged Marese Murphy inThe Irish Times, "it becomes a serious work of literature."[5]
