I have struggled and failed to write something meaningful about what’s happening in Libya at the moment. To comment from safe and cosy Europe seems trite and selfish, and to acknowledge this fact seems even more trite and selfish. As Al Jazeera shows footage of rebel outpost and oil wells being bombed by Gaddafi’s forces, and CNBC makes jokes about badly dressed dictators, all we can do is watch, wait and hope. (We can also wonder what was said in the meeting between Libyan under-Secretary for International Cooperation, Mohammed Taher Siyala and our Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out the real truth).

Further afield in another dictatorship, I find a book by Gabriel García Márquez that thumbs its nose beautifully at Pinochet’s Chilean administration. Clandestine in Chile is the story of a Chilean exile, who, over a decade after leaving the country, returns, disguised as a Uruguayan business man to secretly make a film about the state of the country and its people.

It’s a far cry from García Márquez’ usual superstition and hyperbole; the story is down to earth, a bit spy movie-ish and, above all, a true account of a man’s determined and very personal act of defiance, but García Márquez did, after all, originally train as a journalist before he made his name as an author.

Littín, our hero, is helped by underground resistance groups, both in and out of Chile, who coach him in his new identity, provide him with an arsenal of passwords and generally try to keep him out of trouble and possible arrest. His account of his days in Chile juxtaposes episodes full of nail-biting tension with utterly surreal situations; one night the phone rings in Littín’s hotel room; it’s a woman speaking English calling him “Darling” “Sweetheart” and “Honey”. It’s presumably a chance wrong number, but it spooks Littín enough to change hotels the next morning. On another occasion, he climbs into a prearranged blue Renault 12 and gives the prearranged password “Where can I buy and umbrella at this hour?” only to find it’s the wrong blue Renault 12 and is occupied by one of Chile’s upper-class elite. If it weren’t all so serious it would definitely be funny.

Littín is assisted by five separate film crews, from several countries, three of which are supposedly filming for legitimate purposes and unaware of the other film crews’ presence. They film him in front of monuments and landmarks and in busy squares and famous parks so that no-one can later deny his presence in Chile. His travels around the country are interspersed with short histories of the places he visits, and his memories of earlier times spent there. He interviews leading figures from the underground resistance and even escapes his minders to visit his mother who doesn’t recognise him and says “You must be a friend of my children’s”.

Eventually though, the authorities become aware of Littín’s presence and he is warned to “Get out or go under”. Clandestine in Chile is a short book, spanning just over a hundred pages. But it’s a refreshing change to García Márquez’ usual mysticism and is no less enchanting for that. The Pinochet regime eventually fell in 1990, but in 1985, Littín left Chile after shooting 100,000 feet of film inside the country.

I don’t know when Gaddafi’s regime in Libya will come to an end.