![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes we read from the perspective of one of these prisoners, and then the writing becomes almost esoteric, as the reader partakes of the stream of consciousness, muddled thoughts and actions of disease-ridden and psychologically confused, sometimes delirious, men. ![]() The Yankee prisoners themselves and the prison guards and Confederate officers who run the prison move through the book, making appearances, telling their own stories, but mostly they don’t survive. ![]() A few characters persist throughout the entire book–the Claffey family who own a plantation just outside the prison, another family of poor whites who live nearby. The book is mostly made up of short story or novelette length vignettes of the experiences of different people, mostly men, in and around the prison. The novel is 750 pages long and almost unbelievably detailed in its treatment of the Confederate prison of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia. The front page of the copy of this Pulitzer prize-winning novel that I got from the library says that MacKinlay Kantor “planned the writing of Andersonville, his masterwork, for twenty-five years.” I can believe it. ![]()
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