Jeffrey Archer and the prisoner’s canon: writers who wrote behind bars

Archer’s prison years fed his writing. From Genet and Cervantes to Althusser and Unterweger, a look at how writers have turned confinement into literatureIn 2001, the British Conservative politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer (who died on October 5, aged 86) went to prison for two years (albeit sentenced for four) after it emerged that he had perjured himself during an earlier defamation trial.