Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares by Armando Valladares; Translated by Andrew Hurley; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Stephen Sartarelli

This is a history of the Cuban Revolution as viewed from its dungeons. Armando Valladares describes his twenty-two years of torment and triumph in Castro’s prison. Arrested at the age of twenty-two for being philosophically opposed to communism, he gives a dramatic and harrowing account of the regular beatings, the hunger, the humiliation, and the psychological “experimentation” to which the Cuban Revolution subjected its unrepentant enemies. However, Valladares’s hope and courage transcended these horrors, showing us the heroic possibilities of one possessing unshaken faith.

More than an indictment of a cruel regime, this book is a testimony to the power of biblical faith to allow a man to survive against all hope.

“Mr. Valladares offers a record of dearly bought knowledge that no one can afford to overlook.”—Wall Street Journal

“Valladares’s book is an event of considerable cultural and political significance: the most detailed and irrefutable description yet published of the suffering engendered in Cuba by communism and Fidel Castro.”—Time

“[A]n extraordinary account....What sets it apart from other prison memoirs is not the suffering...but its record of all-out resistance. It could almost be entitled ‘The War Memoirs of Armando Valladares.’”—Los Angeles Times

Stephen Sartarelli is an award-winning translator and poet. He lives in France.