The Enormous Room

By E. E. Cummings

Subjects: Fiction, biographical, Concentration camps in fiction, American fiction (fictional works by one author), World War, 1914-1918, Concentration camp inmates, Personal narratives, French Prisoners and prisons, Concentration camp inmates in fiction, Soldiers, Fiction, Concentration camps, France in fiction, European War, 1914-1918, World War, 1914-1918 in fiction, Biography, Americans, American Personal narratives, Americans in fiction, Biographie, Guerre mondiale (1914-1918), Fiction, historical, general, Prisonniers et prisons des Français, France, fiction, Fiction, war & military, World war, 1914-1918, fiction, Ambulance drivers in fiction, Ambulance drivers

Description: The Enormous Room is Cummings’s autobiographical narrative of the time he spent in La Ferté Mace, a French concentration camp a hundred miles west of Paris. Cummings and a friend, both members of an American ambulance corps in France during World War I, were erroneously suspected of treasonable correspondence and were imprisoned from August, 1917, until January, 1918. In this book, Cummings describes the prisoners with whom he shared his captivity, the captors who subjected their victims to enormous cruelty, and the filthy surroundings of the prison camp.