Hotel Kerobokan

Book excerpt: Welcome to Hotel Kerobokan, the ironic name given to Bali's most notorious jail by its inmates. It's a bizarre nether world where murderers sleep alongside petty thieves, drug and alcohol addiction is rife, guards are corrupt and money talks. Into this hellhole have passed a procession of the infamous and the tragic: the Bali bombers, Gold Coast beautician Schapelle Corby, the Bali Nine and Chris Packer, among many others. The inmates grim experiences are at stark odds with the holiday paradise that exists just beyond Kerobokan's dank concrete walls. Hotel Kerobokan is the shocking inside story of the jail and its inmates – famous, infamous and unknown, written by an Australian with unprecedented access to the inside. Kathryn Bonella spent a year in Bali, entering the jail every day to co-write Schapelle Corby's bestselling 2006 autobiography. Now she's telling the incredible story of the jail itself. Backed up by interviews with prisoners past and present, the truth about Hotel Kerobokan explodes off the page. Simultaneously mesmerising and stomach-turning, Hotel Kerobokan paints a confronting picture. Everything you've heard is true. And there's much, much more than you ever imagined there could be.