Showing Marching Powder by Rusty Young

A gripping, true-life account of surviving one of the world’s craziest and most dangerous prisons

Marching Powder is the story of Thomas MaFadden, a small-time English drug smuggler who was arrested in Bolivia and thrown inside the notorious San Pedro prison. He found himself in a bizarre world, with conditions reflecting all that is wrong with South American society. Inmates have to pay entrance fees and buy their own cells (the alternative is to sleep outside and die of exposure), prisoners’ wives and children often live inside, and high quality cocaine is manufactured and sold from the prison walls.

Thomas ended up making a living by giving backbackers tours of the prison and was even named in the Lonely Planet guide to Bolivia. When he was told that for a bribe of $5000 his sentence could be overturned, it was the many backbackers who’d passed through the jail who sent him the money.

Shocking, funny and sometimes surreal, Marching Powder is a riveting story of survival against the odds.

‘All the staples of the prison memoir are here: sadistic guards, an attempted break-out, the terrors of solitary confinement, the joys of freedom . . . The result is a truly gripping piece of testimony’ Sunday Telegraph
‘This exotic, cautionary yarn opens the abyss beneath our wealthy world’ Uncut

The Pan Real Lives Series brings together some truly remarkable stories. From moving accounts of suffering and redemption to fun and fabulous confessions, entertaining adventures and touching tales of devotion, these are life-changing stories told from the heart.