It’s a story from the absurd depths of Kafka: an author is charged with transmitting anti-government propaganda via “subliminal messages.” At his trial, he is accused of being both a “religious putschist” and a (presumably secular) “Marxist terrorist.” The contradiction notwithstanding, the judges deliberate on his fate while he comes to the sudden realization that he’s seen this all before: in one of his novels. And just as he had convicted the character in that novel, he knows that he, too, will be convicted. His sentence is life in prison. At his appeal, he is once again convicted — but then released for time served. It would be a good story if it wasn’t true.

Altan was among Turkey’s most-read novelists when counterterrorism officers took him into custody in Istanbul in September 2016. Earlier that year, Altan had appeared on a television talk show criticizing the government’s brutal reaction to a recent coup attempt. In response, the state jailed him on charges of supporting the plotters. He was eventually found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. After being held in Silivri Prison on the outskirts of Istanbul for three years, Altan was released on Monday, when he was simultaneously convicted of aiding a terrorist network and allowed to walk free for time served. Throughout his time in jail, he struck a tone of defiance, at one point writing: “They may have the power to imprison me but no one has the power to keep me in prison . . . Like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through walls with ease.”

Altan penned those lines as part of “The Writer’s Paradox,” one of nineteen essays he produced in prison, which have been collected in the new memoir I Will Never See the World Again. Passed from Silivri to the outside world via his lawyers, the essays describe the terms of his incarceration, meditate on the impossibility of imprisoning the imagination, and relate moments of humor — even joy. Lacking access to reference material, Altan quotes other authors from memory, often drawing on their own tales of confinement. In perhaps the grossest irony, he also reflects on the fate he had supposedly written for himself as he imprisoned one of the characters in his novels. Together, the essays produce a memoir about the horror of prison and the power of art.