In the introduction by Jack Gelber (The Connection) the point is made that in spite of the repressive restrictions in Castro's Cuba, artists and writers have been able to maintain a certain independence. However Desnoes' novel is such a profession of total negation, that his political commentary is overshadowed by his personal disaffection and could well be overlooked by Fidel. Let Desnoes tell it as he does in this diary writing ""down the life or the lie we really are.""...alienated and alone (""I don't want to know anything. I don't want to remember. I don't want to have an inconsolable memory."") His wife, a ""de luxe little animal,"" has left him; he has momentary desires for the girl who cleans his apartment and then the untutored Elena; he has broken with his former friends. If he is trapped on this island, he is just as surely trapped by his own sense of non-existential futility--""a mediocre man, a modern man, a link in the chain, a worthless cockroach."" The diary, inconsolable, even ill tempered, has surprisingly an abrasive vitality as it refutes life, resists death....Perhaps because Desnoes reflects the symptomatic stance and idiom of this age.