Hell's Kitchen

LORENZO CARCATERRA groeit in de jaren '60 op in HELL'S KITCHEN, een beruchte achterbuurt van New York. Met zijn drie boezemvrienden geniet hij een tamelijk zorgeloze jeugd tot een onschuldig bedoelde grap volledig uit de hand loopt. De vier worden veroordeeld tot een jaar opsluiting in een jeugdgevangenis. Dat jaar in het Wilkinson Home for Boys zal hun leven voor altijd veranderen. Ze worden door de bewakers getreiterd, mishandeld en verkracht. Jaren later is een van hen advocaat en een ander journalist. De overige twee zijn professionele huurmoordenaars. Maar alle vier zullen ze de rauwe realiteit van de angst, pijn en mishandeling in Wilkinson nooit meer vergeten... Recensie(s) NBD|Biblion recensie Door een onschuldig bedoelde grap raakt een man zwaar gewond en worden de schrijver en drie vrienden tot opsluiting in een jeugdgevangenis veroordeeld. Het leven hier is een hel, de cipiers zijn sadisten die op allerlei manieren martelen en (seksueel) misbruik maken van de jongens. Jaren later is de schrijver journalist, een vriend is procureur, en de twee anderen vermoorden de ergste cipier. De daaropvolgende rechtszaak, waarin de vriend als openbaar aanklager optreedt, is doorgestoken kaart, bedoeld om de twee vrij te krijgen en de jeugdgevangenis en de cipiers aan te klagen. Dit heeft succes. Het boek is een aangrijpend en fascinerend verslag van een falend strafbeleid in de staat New York. Er is geen enkel toezicht en geen mogelijkheid om iets tegen misstanden te ondernemen. De gestraften komen ofwel gebroken, ofwel als misdadigers uit de inrichting. Vanuit de optiek om daar iets aan te doen is dit boek geschreven; als tijdsdocument van de jaren zestig tot tachtig maakt het indruk. Het verhaal leest als een zeer spannende thriller.Verfilmd als 'Sleepers' Sleeper (colloq.): 1. out-of-town hit man who spends the night after a local contract is completed. 2. A juvenile sentenced to serve any period longer than nine months in a state-managed facility. This is the story of four young boys. Four lifelong friends. Intelligent, fun-loving, wise beyond their years, they are inseparable. Their potential is unlimited, but they are content to live within the closed world of New York City's Hell's Kitchen. And to play as many pranks as they can on the denizens of the street. They never get caught. And they know they never will. Until one disastrous summer afternoon. On that day, what begins as a harmless scheme goes horribly wrong. And the four find themselves facing a year's imprisonment in the Wilkinson Home for Boys. The oldest of them is fifteen, the youngest twelve. What happens to them over the course of that year -- brutal beatings, unimaginable humiliation -- will change their lives forever. Years later, one becomes a lawyer. One a reporter. And two have grown up to be murderers, professional hit men. For all of them, the pain and fear of Wilkinson still rages within. Only one thing can erase it. Revenge. To exact it, they will twist the legal system. Commandeer the courtroom for their agenda. Use the wiles they observed on the streets, the violence they learned at Wilkinson. If they get caught this time, they only have one thing left to lose: their lives. SLEEPERS is the extraordinary true story of four men who take the law into their own hands. It is a searing portrait of a system gone awry and of the people -- some innocent, some not so innocent -- who must suffer the consequences. At the heart of SLEEPERS is a sensational murder trial that ultimately gives devastating, yet exhilarating, proof of street justice and truly defines the meaning of loyalty and love between friends. Told with great humor and compassion, even at its most harrowing, SLEEPERS is an unforgettable reading experience. "Undeniably powerful, an enormously affecting and intensely human story."
--The Washington Post Book World
"A GUT-WRENCHING PIECE OF WORK. . . Carcaterra's graphic narrative grips like gunfire in a dark alley."
--The Atlanta Journal & Constitution
"In his controversial memoir SLEEPERS, Carcaterra remembers harrowing months in the Wilkinson Home for Boys and the elaborate vengeance he and his friends exacted against the guards. He tells it all in spare, stylish prose . . . [with] relentless momentum and sheer drama. . . . SLEEPERS is a thriller, to be sure, but it is equally a wistful hymn to another age."
--The Washington Post Book World
"A TERRIFYING ACCOUNT OF BRUTALITY AND RETRIBUTION, searing in its emotional truth, peopled with murderers, sadists, and thugs, but biblical in its passion and scope."
--People
"SLEEPERS is so many things: a Dickensian portrait of coming of age in Hell's Kitchen, a terrifying and heartbreaking account of the brutalization of youth, a shocking--and disturbingly satisfying--climax worthy of the finest suspense novel. A brilliant, troubling, important book."
--Jonathan Kellerman
"COMPELLING."
--USA Today

Based on the author's own experience, Sleepers is a relentlessly gripping, shockingly irresistible chronicle of four boys' lives on the gritty streets of Hell's Kitchen and in the hellish halls of a reformatory--where two of them would be turned to lives of crime and driven to violent revenge. Movie rights sold to Propaganda Films.

When friendship runs deeper than bloodAn unforgettable true story of friendship, loyalty and revenge. They were four boys who shared everything - the laughter and bruises of an impoverished upbringing in New York's West Side. Then one of their pranks misfired - a man nearly died and they were sent away to a reformatory school. Then they suffered the worst abuse the guards could inflict on them. They were forever scarred by their experiences. Eleven years later: two of them became killers for the mob. They met the ringleader of the guards who abused them - and shot him dead in front of several witnesses. No one thought they would see the outside of a prison again - but the four friends banded together once more and in one last, audacious stand brought their own vengeance to the courtroom. LABOR DAY WEEKEND always signaled the annual go-cart race across the streets of Hell's Kitchen, the mid-Manhattan neighborhood where I saw born in 1954 and lived until 1969.