The Alcatraz part of the collection's title may conjure up images of escaping, but rather than being allowed to make a run for it, the reader is taken into an authoritarian world (where Soviet-style nicknames are handed out) as told through a covert agent narrator who ultimately turns against the oppressive regime he serves after getting to know a pair of prisoners in the Harare Alcatraz he is supposed to infiltrate. Also included in the anthology is Black Britain, a tale of a young man who becomes politicised when his father is pulled over by the Metropolitan Police in a racially-motivated stop.
The matter-of-fact writing style in the thought-provoking title story makes for an intense, disturbing and unsettling fictional world, but might be unsatisfactory for readers who want to find out what happened next to the two prisoners as well as those who dislike sudden time jumps (as per the narrator's change of heart) and those who prefer stories to be shown rather than told (as is the case in the first of the five sections that the title story is divided into).
The matter-of-fact writing style in the thought-provoking title story makes for an intense, disturbing and unsettling fictional world, but might be unsatisfactory for readers who want to find out what happened next to the two prisoners as well as those who dislike sudden time jumps (as per the narrator's change of heart) and those who prefer stories to be shown rather than told (as is the case in the first of the five sections that the title story is divided into).