This article asks how life narratives told by marginalized people get heard (or not), with reference to prison writing from East Germany and the Federal Republic. Without claiming that captivity is the same in all places, times, and political situtations, I borrow Primo Levi's articulation of a narrative problem—the ‘unlistened-to story’—to explore what makes a story worth listening to, and why some stories get heard whereas others are inaudible. Because stories of literary picaros overlap in content and structure with prisoner life stories, I reflect on what the picaresque might tell us about the cultural conditions of audibility.