First published by Random House, 1967 

Elkin’s second novel dealt with the effects of incarceration on the human character, a common theme in other novels of the 1960s, such as A Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Fixer. Elkin, though, had no political or social agenda in this or any other novel. The clash between the individualistic Feldman and the authoritative warden is a philosophical study of the same obsessive personality trait that they share, and the prison itself is more based on Elkin’s imagination than on a real penitentiary.