Werner Sedlak has argued that Ruth First’s 117 Days: An Interrogation under the South African Ninety-Day Detention Act embodies what Henri Lefebvre calls “contradictory space,” that is, “the prison becomes a ‘space in-between’—here, between domination and appropriation” (Sedlak, “Ways of Appropriating Space in South African Prison Memoirs from Ruth First to Nelson Mandela,” in Borderlands: Negotiating Boundaries in Post-Colonial Writing, 1999). This paper pushes Sedlak’s analysis further, arguing that the prison memoir also articulates what I am calling ‘contradictory time,’ as First finds ways of ‘marking time,’ of performing time in between the everyday calendar of the world outside prison and the temptation to put an end to time by committing suicide in the prison cell. Third, in-between space and in-between time constitute the contradiction of solitude, in which, paradoxically, the spatial and temporal isolation of imprisonment frees First to establish communities of solidarity with family, with friends, with other detainees, and even, most ironically, with her oppressors. Representing these contradictions—literally, these ‘speakings-against’ the conditions of space, time and isolation imposed by totalitarian authorities—117 Days testifies to First’s freedom, even though a parcel bomb from the South African Bureau of State Security silenced First herself. The question remains, however, both in this case and in the cases of other prison testimonies to martyrs of political oppression, at what cost such freedom?