As Nelson Mandela said, ‘a nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.’ Shadowland tells the sometimes inspiring, often painful stories of Germany’s prisoners, and thereby shines new light on Germany itself. The story begins at the end of the Second World War, in a defeated country on the edge of collapse, in which orphaned and lost children are forced to live rough, scavenging and stealing to stay alive, often laying the foundations of a ‘criminal career’. While East Germany developed detention facilities for its secret police, West Germany passed prison reform laws, which erected, in the words of a prisoner, ‘little asbestos walls in Hell’. Shadowland is Germany as seen through the lives, experiences, triumphs and tragedies of its lowest citizens.