The shadow of the gallows fell on C. A. Balan one cold September night in 1950. He was hunted down and arrested on the charge of a political murder and convicted. This book is a compelling account of the eleven years he spent in jail waiting to be hanged. A jail diary in retrospect, Balan's story is also a comment on justice, on prisons as he knew them and the dark humanity on both sides of the bars.

C A Balan