Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun, #1-2)

by Gene Wolfe

“After a time I began to ask questions of my own and found that none of them, not even the oldest woman, had ever been free. Men and women are put into this room alike, it seems, and in the course of nature they produce children. And though some are taken away, most remain here throughout their lives. They have no possessions and no hope of release. Actually, they don’t know what freedom is, and although the older man and one girl told me seriously that they would like to go outside, I don’t think they meant to stay. The old women are seventh-generation prisoners, so they said—but one let it slip that her mother had been a seventh-generation prisoner as well. “They are remarkable people in some respects. Externally they have been shaped completely by this place where they have spent all their lives. Yet beneath that are…” Jonas paused, and I could feel the silence pressing in all about us. “Family memories, I suppose you could call them. Traditions from the outside world that have been handed down to them, generation to generation, from the original prisoners from whom they are descended. They don’t know what some of the words mean any longer, but they cling to the traditions, to the stories, because those are all they have; the stories and their names.”