The Green Mile

"It’s an immensely courageous book for such a famous author to write. It’s written from the perspective of the warder, whose job is to supervise death row and the execution of prisoners. The story is ultimately about a guy called John Coffey, a Christ-like figure who gets executed. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s a magical realist book in some ways, but in other ways it’s an intensely realistic book about many of the aspects of death row. It’s set in the thirties, in 1932 I think. Conditions are a bit different these days but the process of execution is very similar. I came at this book with a prejudice because, although I think he’s a brilliant writer, I hate scary books of the type that Stephen King often writes. My prejudices were proven very wrong. I’ve sometimes thought that people who buy into the whole Christianity thing, surely the second coming would be someone despised by the hierarchy, so why not another guy who is sentenced to death, just like the first time? In that sense, I think it’s an interesting story and a very challenging one for some people who thinks that the world is ruled by the Old Testament. Like everything else in life, there’s a huge range. I have met some wardens of prisons who are sociopathic. On the other hand, I’ve met some people who were doing it for the right reasons – trying to make the world a more humane place. As much as I may disapprove of the regime of prison in general, you’ve got to have good people doing it. In Britain you get relatively left-wing people who approach prison work in a way that is more enlightened than the politicians who are standing at their podium and banging it while trying to show how tough they are. The same is true in America."