A striking book was published in India: Hangman's Journal...

A striking book was published in India: Hangman's Journal by Shashi Warrier, a novel that draws upon the life of Janardhanan Pillai, the hangman of the Maharaja of Travancore in the early 1940s and, over three decades, the performer of 117 executions. A work that draws from Pillai's diaries and the author's interviews with him and takes us into the mind of a man struggling with his conscience. This novel also provides interesting information about the rituals of hanging. Four-o-clock is the time set to send a man to his death. The hangman deals with every detail of hanging with professional expertise: a neat description of the gallows, the required length of the drop, the preparation of the rope, the dark pit where the body hangs for at least 15 minutes before it is taken down.