Adolf Hitler. Caesarina Kona Makhoere. Gregory David Roberts. Daniel Defoe. ee cummings. Ezra Pound. Martin Luther. Miguel de Cervantes. Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Oscar Wilde.

What do these men - and woman - have in common?

Wa Thiong'o incorporated his experiences in Detained: A Writer's Diary of Prison.

South African Makhoere, who was arrested after the 1976 Soweto uprising, told us in No Child's Play: In Prison Under Apartheid of her journey into adulthood in jail and how she continued to stand her ground even under 24-hour guard.

Hitler wrote his autobiography, Mein Kampf - in which he also outlined his political ideology - while serving a sentence for treason for the unsuccessful coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Proving that it is not only an idle mind that is the devil's workshop.

Interestingly, many, many years before the Fuehrer was born, the founding father of the Lutheran Church kept himself busy while under arrest in a castle by translating the New Testament from Greek into German.

And Roberts' novel, Shantaram, a 933-page orgy of crime, shady underworld dealings, war and the philosophy behind such a life, became an international bestseller.

Never has the life of an ex-drug addict, former bank robber, money launderer, forger of all things and gangster been so intriguing.

Roberts said he wrote Shantaram, which is based on his own experiences, in prison - and the fact that the manuscript was destroyed twice didn't discourage him.

English scribe and author of the famous Robinson Crusoe, Defoe, penned the poem A Hymn for Pillory while he was incarcerated for dissent.

When he was pilloried as punishment, instead of humiliating him by spitting on him, or throwing things at him - or whatever they did in those days to people with different views - the public read verses of his poem.

American poet Pound also found catharsis in the written word. Parts of Pisan Cantos were written while he was held by the American army in Pisa because he had announced his support of Mussolini's regime in World War 2.

Cervantes claimed that the inspiration for his definitive work, Don Quixote, came to him while he was in prison.

Wilde, who was sentenced to two years for "gross indecency", used the time in jail to craft an apology to rival all apologies in the form of the essay De Profundis.

ee cummings' autobiographical novel, The Enormous Room, was written while he was imprisoned by the French during World War 1 for expressing anti-war sentiments in letters he wrote to his family.

Could we, in the not-so-distant future, expect to add Donovan Moodley to this list of writers?

Last week, as Moodley, who is serving a life sentence for the kidnapping and murder of student Leigh Matthews in 2004, read page after page in an attempt to persuade the Johannesburg High Court to grant him a retrial, two words came into my head: prison literature.

When I saw pictures of the Moodley and Matthews families in court, I thought of the long-deceased US Supreme Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr, who quipped: "This is a court of law . not a court of justice."

Here were the parents of a murdered young woman reliving the trauma of her death, with the fervent hope that the court would uphold the decision to keep her murderer behind bars.

At the same time, another family was hoping the court would give their son the opportunity to tell his "truth", which he claims he has been scared to tell to protect this family.

But I digress.

As Moodley was stating his case, going through his 323-page affidavit, I couldn't help but wonder if he is venturing into the realm of prison literature - if he is not finding expression in the wonderful world of character creation, in the twists and turns of a well-thought-out plot and the unexpected ending that leaves the reader questioning who the victim is.