Kafka wrote about a penal colony, and it did not sound very nice, though Kafka tends to be, a tad Kafkaesque at times. This penal colony is rather small, 34 acres. It is located 9 miles off the shore of French Guiana. This rocky penal colony is 130 feet above sea level.
On this day August 22nd, in 1952, the social exile Devil’s Island is closed. It had been open for over 100 years. A penal colony is a form of prison where a person will be exiled, generally on an island, far away from civilization.
Devil’s Island was where political prisoners, and then regular prisoners, were sent. Living conditions were atrocious, few people ever made it out of Devil’s Island. The first time these issues were revealed was when Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly accused and sent to the colony.