Since its first appearance in 1968, The Prisoner has been a popular book, unique in that it was written by a rosh yeshiva who knows the craft of writing. A graduate of London's Yeshivath Torath Emeth and the Gateshead Kollel, Rabbi Solomon Alter Halpern taught Advanced Talmud at Torath Emeth, and was co-editor of the first volume of Michtav meEliyahu, the mussar lectures of his great teacher Rabbi E. E. Dessler.

To the finely wrought stories in this volume Rabbi Halpern brought his penchant for research, adding authentic touches of history to the heartwarming, inspiring incidents that his imagination has developed out of the panorama of the Jewish past. In his own forthright and dramatic way, he has tried to show how children past and present can find triumphant solutions to human problems in the light of the Torah.