Stitched Up

'Stories that will curl your toes, make you laugh out loud and break your heart all at the same time.'
PROFESSOR DAME SUE BLACK, author of All That Remains


Told from the inside out, this is a harrowing, humorous and hard-hitting tale of life behind bars by a prison doctor who has seen it all. Literally.

Dr Shahed Yousaf spends his time running between emergencies - from overdoses to assaults, from cell fires to suicides - with one hand perpetually hovering over the panic button. Being a prison doctor is not for the faint-hearted.

An outsider on the inside, in Stitched Up he introduces us to a cast of unforgettable characters, including killers, con men and auto-cannibals. To Dr Yousaf, they are patients first and prisoners second - because any one of us could end up on the wrong side of the law.

Dedicated to caring for people on the margins of society, he tells us honestly and compassionately what it's like to be their doctor in a system that's chronically overcrowded, drastically under-resourced and all too easy to ignore. But while the system is failing, he and his colleagues are doing their very best to prop it up. In stories that are frequently harrowing, sometimes humorous and always hard-hitting, we discover how difficult it is to be locked up - but that there is still hope for all those who dare to care.

For fans of This is Going to Hurt, The Secret Barrister and A Bit of a Stretch

Reviews

Written with wit and humility this extraordinary account of life as a prison doctor is the sort of book that has you reaching for the internet halfway through a paragraph.The detail, the stories, the statistics.'That can't be true, can it?'Yes it is.Whatever you think you know about prison, a Yousaf's memoir will open your eyes and your heart and make you wish things were different.There's laughter (bright and grim), redemption and much heart on the pages and whatever your view of locking people up, you will come away wiser and more compassionate after reading Stitched Up.