"After making sure the coast was clear, we walked down the few steps leading from the door out of which we had just emerged and stepped into the warm summer sun in the street. We were free. We saw our hours, days, months, years of boredom, frustration, and isolation behind us. And ahead, freedom...”
In this jaw-dropping classic of prison escape literature, Tim Jenkin tells of how he, Stephen Lee, and Alexander Moumbaris, using a series of hand-made wooden keys, got through nine locked doors inside Pretoria Central, taking them to Mozambique and finally to London. This fast-paced thriller begins with Jenkin’s Cape Town childhood and the growth of his political awareness, his university days, and his friendship with Stephen Lee. Both men left South Africa after university for London to join the African National Congress.
After training in London, Jenkin and Lee became expert pamphlet bombers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and after several successful years of raising awareness about the atrocities of apartheid that they were caught and sentenced to 12 years in jail.
The escape came about after Lee’s father visited his son in prison with a copy of the classic, escape novel Papillon. After reading the novel Jenkin began to seriously form an escape plan.
The book is available online and from all bookstores. The movie with the same name, starring Daniel Ratcliff, has just been released on Amazon Prime.
