The scenes are horrifying, poignant, and inevitably frustrating. He does a service in describing the hapless UN presence, or reminding readers of the unconscionable destruction of the Library of Sarajevo. Nevertheless, these are newspaper reports, written in the heat of a horrible moment, seething with outrage. This serves a purpose, but it does not always read well years after the fact. The horrors he has described, the facts he has related speak for themselves, but unfortunately Goytisolo can't leave it at that.
New friendships become deep and long-lived.
Sincerity and a longing for truth take hold. One's sense of morality is refined and improved. One doesn't doubt his sincerity, but his conclusions read like an attempt to resurrect the time of the Spanish Civil War, Goytisolo's ideal of combatting evil, with intellectuals allied together in a common cause. The conflict there, between the fundamentalist FIS organization and an often repressive government is less well-known abroad, and Goytisolo describes it well. Algeria is also a country veiled in secrecy, with almost no foreign journalists daring to go there, and the local press unable to present a clear picture either.