Revolutionary activist Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on Sept. 3, 1918, exhorted colleagues not to relent in their struggles. "Stand your ground," she wrote, "till we meet again at work!"
Many great leaders, writers, artists and intellectuals have revealed themselves, wittingly or not, in letters written from prison. Tom Paine, intellectual inspiration for the American Revolution, used some of his time in a Paris prison in 1793-94 to polish the manuscript of "The Age of Reason."
Now Fidel Castro reveals his early self in "The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro," published this year by Nation Books in the United States. This is the complete volume of 21 letters Castro wrote while incarcerated on Cuba's infamous Isle of Pines for his part in leading a July 1953 raid on the Moncada military garrison in Santiago de Cuba. The edition also includes the Spanish-language originals, which were published in Havana in 1959.