'This Blinding Absence Of Light' (5)

 is like the prison it describes,
not a book for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 12, page 63...

'To resist, you must think. Without consciousness, without thought, there is not resistance. In the end we no longer felt like laughing at Kmandar's cruelty. Ditto was carried off in a wheelbarrow. We were relieved. His cell had to be cleaned and disinfected. Apparently, they were embarrassed by this delay, because M'Fadel told us, between two groans, K'mandars orders.'.