Parachuted into France as a British secret agent, Christopher Burney was arrested by the Gestapo and thrown into a solitary confinement cell in a prison outside Paris. There he spent 526 days in complete isolation. With little human contact and nothing to distract him, Burney developed a mental and spiritual regime that enabled him not just to survive but to develop an internal resilience that enabled him to survive his subsequent time in Buchenwald concentration camp.

Out of print for over 40 years and virtually unknown outside the U.K., Solitary Confinement has quietly developed a reputation as a modern masterpiece of contemplative literature. As the critic Frank Kermode wrote, “The courage and the intellectual integrity Christopher Burney are far beyond what most of us would expect of ourselves.”

“Readers who are genuinely inquisitive about their own souls and about the prospect for our species should read Solitary Confinement.” — Rebecca West

The courage and the intellectual integrity of Christopher Burney are far beyond what most of us would expect of ourselves.

One of the great masterpieces of contemplative literature.

Christopher Burney was born into an upper-class Scots family in 1917. He left school as a teenager and wandered around Europe for several years, mastering French along the way. Joining the British Army after the start of World War Two, he was recruited as a Special Operations Executive agent and parachuted into France in 1942. His network compromised, he was arrested and put into solitary confinement in Fresnes prison outside Paris, where he was held for 526 days. He was then transported to Buchenwald concentration camp, from which he was liberated in April 1945. After the war, he worked for the United Nations in New York City and Libya before becoming a banker. He spent much of the last decade of his life in a small village in France, where he died in 1980.