RaveBoston ReviewLike the Senate report, Guantánamo Diary lays bare episodes of moral turpitude in post-9/11 American history, even against the encumbrances of official censorship. Slahi’s clear-eyed chronicle of his time in Guantánamo, however, bears neither the report’s stiff, bureaucratic prose, nor its objective of showing enhanced interrogation’s ineffectiveness. Disproving the efficacy of torture interests Slahi far less than registering its emotional and psychological effects. He does not belabor the truths that torture is wrong and produces bad intelligence. Instead he tells us something the Senate intelligence committee never could: what it means to live through that torture ... Primo Levi is the literary spirit Slahi most embodies ... Like Levi, Slahi writes with remarkable equanimity, allowing himself neither the howling of lament nor the detachment of reportage ...
Guantánamo Diary is further distinguished by Slahi’s portrayal of those oppressors, whom he aims not to caricature but to understand ... Slahi’s memoir shows us just how easily national strength can undergird moral weakness.
