Sign-In
Cart
To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter
Hardcover
Series: Curations
Biographies GeneralPolitical Biographies
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9781967613298
Publisher: Creed & Culture
Published: Nov 10 2026
Pages: 392
Language: English
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.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Kinney, David
Wittman, Robert K.
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback