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Genocide, Torture, and Terrorism pp 89–119Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Torture

Undervalued Injustice

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Abstract

Imagine a fully conscious man strapped faced down on a cold steel table. A sharp knife, hovering above, descends to carve descriptions of his hideous deeds into his back. Another device follows the knife to stop the bleeding and cleanse the wound before a third device fills the open wounds with ink. The machine—called the Harrow—“goes on writing, more and more deeply, for twelve hours.”1 With this, the writer Franz Kafka provides a harrowing iconic image of torture in his dark story The Penal Colony.

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Notes

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© 2016 Thomas W. Simon

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Simon, T.W. (2016). Torture. In: Genocide, Torture, and Terrorism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137415110_5

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