Uplifting. Moving. As journalist Cheng Lei describes her soul-destroying imprisonment in China, outrageously accused of spying, I wondered how she endured — more than three years in the cells, the lights always on, the prison guards never more than a few feet away. “You endure isolation for so long that you feel like you’re floating in dark, endless space,” she writes. Ten days felt like 10 years. She would pretend she was being hugged by her family in Melbourne as the sun shone.

— Jane Perlez, former New York Times Beijing bureau chief; host of podcast Face-Off: The U.S. v China.

Listen to Cheng Lei interviewed by Richard Fidler on ABC’s Conversations podcast.