Set in the closed world of late-nineteenth century Montenegro, Under the Colors tells the story of a heroic people"s struggle to free themselves from alien rule. Milovan Djilas describes in epic style an era and a way of life that have long since disappeared. Yet this majestic historical novel has an import for today, when the voices of political prisoners are stifled in the prisons of many countries. Djilas writes of the psychological and ideological effects of imprisonment and torture for both the victim and oppressor. Under the colors is a novel that explores the concept of courage under conditions that seem totally destructive to the human spirit. Montenegro of the last century, a "land without justice," is a world where in T. S. Eliot"s phrase, "there is only the fight to recover that what has been lost/ And found and lost again and again."