Camp Concentration

Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch 1968

Lefty poet Louis Sacchetti is a conscientious objector in a near-future war obviously supposed to be Vietnam. The story starts with him doing time in a prison, when one night he's whisked off to a strange secret windowless prison with no explanation. This is not Guantanamo however, all the other prisoners appear to be geniuses of some sort and all are encouraged to pursue their own intellectual and creative projects in well resourced if enclosed surroundings. All is well - until the prisoners start dying mysteriously.

The great thing about this book are the two twists. The first one I deduced from the reading the blurb on the book, though I've removed all references to it here (I'm sure you will too, I'm not being big-headed). The second one comes way from left of field and makes you want to read secti0ns of the book again, in a Sixth Sense, Fight Club way (no, he'd not dead and doesn't have a split personality).

Reading slightly like a blend of the Prisoner, the DHARMA videos in Lost and a John Fowles novel, the whole thing has a thoroughly 60's anything-might-happen feel so redolent of these early New Wave novels that you just don't get these days. Many a page is taken up with the mad characters' musings on their situation, and life. For instance, if you don't like writing like this:

"Intolerable forward! That he cannot at once annihilate anything! The just pause before that which tends to non-being. Barb-tailed Scorpia, as Master Durer demonstrates cannot annihilate anything. Therefore, come, tender litle ones - to plash again! Introduce yourselves to my blood's Phlegathon, Ah how nicely I burn now. Go it, guests! through all my talents!"

then don't bother with reading this. That paragraph makes slightly more sense put in context, actually.

All that said, it still feels relevant from a post-9/11-distrust-of-the-government standpoint; it could easily be made into a film set in the current day (a hint to any film makers reading this).