Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian woman who was held prisoner for eight years in a basement, has revealed new details of her ordeal in an autobiography.

Kampusch's memoirs appeared in Vienna on Tuesday and an English translation is due for release on Thursday. Penguin, the British publishers of the English version, released a statement on behalf of Kampusch: "I now feel strong enough to tell the full story of my abduction for the first time."

In the book, entitled "3,096 Days," Kampusch, who was abducted aged 10 in 1998 while walking to school, describes the relationship she fostered with her abductor Wolfgang Priklopil in order to ensure her survival and the bizarre routines she endured at his hands – he starved her, beat her so badly that she could not lie on her back and forced her to clean his house half naked, calling her his "slave."

Kampusch maintains that she was beaten 200 times and week and told to refer to his kidnaper as "my lord," according to an excerpt in The Daily Mail.

But she survived the ordeal using her "childhood instincts," judging when to give in to her "mentally sick" kidnapper and when to stand up to him. She escaped in August 2006 and Priklopil committed suicide hours later.

Kampusch said she forced herself to regress mentally to the age of four or five in order to cope with her first nights in the windowless cell under the house near the Austrian capital where Priklopil held her.

"It was a desperate attempt to create a small refuge in a hopeless situation," Kampusch, now 22, wrote in the German version of her memoirs.

"When the kidnapper came back to the cell I asked him to stay with me, put me to bed properly and read me a bedtime story. I even asked him for a good-night kiss, like my mother would give me...anything to preserve the illusion of normality."

She said she was petrified that he would kill her.

Describing her captor, Kampusch writes: "At 35, he had soft features and neatly parted brown hair. It was only when you observed him for a longer period that you noticed the traces of madness lurking beneath his conservative exterior."

Kampusch, now 22, goes on to describe how Priklopil would threaten her, saying: "If you're not good, then I'll have to tie you up."

"He told me my parents had refused to pay a ransom, 'Your parents don't love you at all... They don't want you back... They're happy to be rid of you.'"

She also describes the psychological games Priklopil played with her. "In all his visits he talked about the people who'd supposedly 'ordered" my kidnapping and would come and take pictures of me 'and do other things as well'. I lived in constant fear that at any moment a horde of evil men would come into my dungeon and attack me.

"And of course my fear of the 'true kidnappers' made the man who had abducted me seem caring and friendly by contrast."

Some psychologists have described this relationship as Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition when the victim of an abduction identifies with the kidnapper and becomes attached to him or her.

Kampusch kept notebooks in diary form during the later years of her imprisonment which helped form the basis of her book, composed with the help of two ghost writers.

She tried to kill herself several times.

Kampusch escaped four years ago when she was vacuuming Priklopil's car and he was distracted by a cell phone call.

"I was alone. For the first time since the beginning of my imprisonment the kidnapper had taken his eyes off me," she wrote. Kampusch recounts freezing in shock before her survival instinct kicked in.

"Run, run, damn it, run!" she told herself.

Since her escape, Kampusch has chaired her own talk show and made several carefully planned media appearances. A film of her story is set for release in 2012.

"Only now with these lines can I draw a line under this," she writes in the final chapter of her book. "And now I can really say: I am free."

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