This book starts as a conventional story of a siege, snipers and ruined buildings but then becomes something more complex including poems and dream sequences arranged in a lot of short chapters. There is very little direct speech and the 'story' is told by several different voices. Goytisolo packs a lot into a few pages and perhaps the best section concerns an imagined siege in Paris. You will think of Sarajevo, Rwanda and perhaps the Holocaust after reading this powerful book.
