Shadowland

Sarah Colvin is the Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge. She has participated in prison-based arts and education projects, and is an Advisory Group member for the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance. She has authored and edited a number of books, including the Routledge Handbook of German Politics and Culture (2015).

Incisive and humane, Sarah Colvin’s engrossing study of the German prison system since 1945 allows the voices of prisoners to illuminate the differences between penal practice in West and East before 1989 and developments since reunification. The book both offers a unique perspective on modern German history and raises questions of wider relevance concerning punishments and incarceration. - Joachim Whaley, Emeritus Professor of German History and Thought, University of CambridgePrisons are not only an expression of a society’s understanding of justice but a measure of its good sense and humanity. Sarah Colvin‘s remarkable and knowledgeable study offers both a very valuable contribution to the critical analysis of practices of imprisonment and a lively and much-needed perspective on us all as social beings. - Thomas Galli, former prison governor, lawyer and author