Every Man a King: A King Oliver Novel

by Walter Mosley

Solitary confinement, aka isolation, was the certainty of having no rights whatsoever. My hunger and thirst, my loneliness and need for love, my freedom to pick up and go—all of these were gone. This was true poverty. This was the experience of being slowly murdered by a state of being, by uncaring humans, by systems that did not, could not, share my suffering.

“You never know, Detective. You never know. If you wanna know you shouldn’t be at the table. If you wanna know, really you shouldn’t even be alive.”