A new edition of one of the most compelling and beautifully crafted memoirs of the last hundred years, by one of Russia’s most prominent and courageous anticommunist dissidents. “This book is important.” —Ronald Reagan “A landmark book and a human document that remains vital.” —Tom Stoppard “If human bravery were a book, it would be  To Build a Castle .”—Garry Kasparov A major document in the literature of human rights, Vladimir Bukovksy’s  To Build a Castle  is a legendary memoir that has been hailed as a vital classic by figures ranging from Ronald Reagan to Tom Stoppard to Garry Kasparov. At the age of twenty, Vladimir Bukovsky was falsely declared insane and committed to a psychiatric hospital—standard practice for communism's critics in 1963. But the quack doctors and brutal guards who kept him captive didn't realize: Bukovsky wasn't locked up with them. They were locked up with Bukovsky. In this haunting work, Bukovsky details with equal parts burning outrage and bitter humor the cruelties imposed upon Soviet prisoners of conscience. But he also recounts how he found his inner strength and built a fortress around it—the imaginary castle of the title—in which he could remain safe from the daily assaults on his body and mind. In  To Build a Castle , Bukovsky offers powerful firsthand testimony to the importance of personal integrity and perseverance under seemingly boundless oppression and abuse. For nearly fifty years, Bukovsky's story has inspired dissidents, prisoners, and others trapped by circumstance with a profound truth: Even in chains, you can be free. A worldwide bestseller when first published in 1978, this new edition, masterfully translated from the Russian by Michael Scammell, includes a major introduction by acclaimed political philosopher Daniel J. Mahoney. “This book is important.” — Former US President Ronald Reagan “A landmark book and a human document that remains vital.” — Sir Tom Stoppard, Oscar-winning screenwriter of  Shakespeare in Love “Sometimes ironic, sometimes detached, sometimes written in cold fury, but always compelling.” — New Yorker “If human bravery were a book, it would be  To Build a Castle . Bukovsky's memoir serves as testimony to the horrors of totalitarianism, a reference manual of the Soviet gulag during the Brezhnev years, and an unforgettable tribute to the courage of dissidents like Bukovsky. Unfortunately, the book is a reminder we still very much need today, when Western moral equivalence would have us believe that such monsters no longer exist. They do, and  To Build a Castle  is an essential guide to understanding them, and how to fight them.” — Garry Kasparov, Chairman, Human Rights Foundation “A huge story we must not forget. Even inside prison, a revolt of the mind is possible.” — Masha Alyokhina, co-founder, Pussy Riot “One of the great books of the twentieth century.” — John Podhoretz, Commentary “Vladimir Bukovsky has written an extraordinary account of his life in the Soviet Union. . . . Listen closely.” — New York Times Vladimir Bukovsky (1942–2019) was a Soviet political dissident, author, and fierce activist on behalf of freedom and human rights. Expelled from Moscow University for an essay that put the Communist Youth League in a bad light, he was arrested shortly thereafter for producing and possessing material critical of the Soviet Union. Bukovsky was then declared mentally ill and institutionalized/imprisoned for twelve years before being exiled to the West as part of a prisoner swap. Bukovsky’s other books include Soul of Man Under Socialism ,  Soviet Hypocrisy and Western Gullibility , and Judgement in Moscow . In later years he became a determined critic of Vladimir Putin. Bukovsky received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom in 2002. Daniel J. Mahoney is professor emeritus at Assumption University, Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and Senior Visiting Fellow at Hillsdale College. His books include  The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now  and  The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth about a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker . It was December 1976, and I really had very little time left to do—some five months or so in Vladimir Prison, before returning to my old camp, No. 35, in Perm Province, for about ten more months. That was tantamount to going on vacation, or even home. I was already wondering which of the fellows I would find back at the camp and who would be gone by then. Vague snippets of news were brought in by new arrivals to the prison—something was being done in the camp compound, some new regulations had come into force, there were new bosses. In March 1977, I was due to go into internal exile. And those benighted five years of exile infuriated me more than the whole of my prison sentence, like a useless appendage, neither one thing nor the other, neither prison nor freedom. And everything depended on where you were sent, what work you got, and who your bo