Book excerpt: In this novel, which Juan Goytisolo has said will be his last, a melancholy, angry old man reviews the precious moments of his life amid the disasters of contemporary history. Years of love end with the death of his wife: their flat, furniture and CDs go, even memories fade. He remembers tender moments with his mother, who was killed in a bomb-blast unleashed by Fascists on Barcelona, the town he was born in. Together they would look at the stars and identify the brightest constellations. For the narrator, the ideal writer is Tolstoy, an enlightened artistocrat who wished to free his serfs and bring up his children with progressive, humanist principles. Tolstoy's characters embody dreams of a more intense, varied life: through them, the narrator discovers that freedom only exists in books. Like the books of W.G.Sebald and Italo Calvino, Blind Rider is a fictional memoir that spans a history of the last fifty years. Tender at a personal level, it is at a political level an angry rant at God's lack of humanity: it confirms Goytisolo's position as one of the most committed writers of our time.