None of the men in the class had acted in a play or even recited a poem at a school event. Most could not read or memorize a script. But each of these prisoners, some of them jailed for heinous offences, came to Mahmood Farooqui’s drama class because they wanted respect and validation. And thus began the improbable journey of a wildly successful prison experiment. Farooqui, a brilliant scholar and acclaimed stage performer, was himself a prisoner, jailed for a crime he steadfastly denied committing and of which he was finally acquitted. Breaking his silence on the darkest chapter of his life, he has written a radiant memoir. The Tihar Players is one of Asia’s largest prison seen through the eyes of an erudite, observant, meditative, wickedly funny writer; a lapsed atheist; a voracious consumer of Russian literature; an indefatigable memorizer of epic poems and a deeply emotional man, both fragile and resilient.