Irena Cristalis's account of the final years of Timor-Leste's struggle for independence begins with her first visit to the country in 1994. Accompanying the veteran journalist Jill Joliffe to serve as a camerawoman for a documentary, their trip is cut short after they are found hiding in a ditch outside Baucau and arrested by members of Kopassus. A seemingly sympathetic immigration officer facilitates their deportation from the province, but driving through the streets of Dili under the full weight of Indonesian military rule, she is struck by ‘a glimpse of the defiance and courage of Timorese youth’. The hope and energy of the Timorese resistance is what drives Cristalis back to the country four years later, and that which she seeks to chronicle in the book.

The power and unique value of her account lies in the convictions of the characters she profiles. Many are indeed drawn from the country's urban youth, a generation that came of age during the occupation, and particularly those involved in the students’ movement. These are the foreign journalist's natural interlocutors; she gets to know many of them as they provide guidance and translation help. But Cristalis's narrative reaches deeper, into the clergy and beyond Dili to those involved in the armed resistance. A series of interviews with these fighters, including Xanana Gusmão (from his prison in Cipinang, Indonesia) and Taur Matan Ruak, Falintil's last commander, offers insight into the leadership of the armed resistance. These groups do not a fully representative cross-section of Timorese society make, but Cristalis is able to evoke from them some sense of the broad diversity of aspirations and approaches within the resistance.

Some of the book's most engaging moments arise from experiences with her less likely characters. A chapter entitled ‘Dancing with Falintil’ tells of a visit to a resistance camp in Bereleu in June 1999, where the commander ‘L-7’ (Cornelio Gama) holds court over a long night of drinking and dancing. It is a somewhat incongruous moment, set among accounts of the bloodshed playing out across the country. We meet Mana Bisoi, drawn into the resistance in her teenage years who has left her daughter in the care of nuns after the child's father, a senior Falintil leader, refused to fully recognise her birth. Another sharply etched tale follows a member of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) staff back to the Maliana police station, site of a terrible massacre by militia days after referendum results were announced, to look for the remains of her husband's body. Though Cristalis makes clear the role played by Indonesian security forces in driving, and directly participating in, militia violence, she also gives life to members of the Indonesian security apparatus whose motivations are more confused: either out of fear or moral disgust.

If this approach provides a history anchored in a set of personal experiences, it sometimes struggles to comprehensively record the broader context. Where it seeks to fill in lengthy background around events where the author was not present, such as the first 20 years of resistance, or the period of United Nations (UN) transitional administration, Cristalis's account inevitably feels thinner, and might have benefited from broader sources. Where a narrow focus includes her own experience, however, it sometimes offers a richer account than a more comprehensive telling. Cristalis was one of three foreign journalists who chose not to evacuate from the UN compound in the bloody days following the referendum announcement, amid disagreement over whether a group of hundreds of Timorese refugees gathered in the compound would accompany them. This is a period related many times elsewhere by those involved in the cables to and from New York, but Cristalis's view is closer to those with whom she is sharing the crowded floor: confusion over how any option other than full evacuation could be considered.

This second edition has been updated with chapters that take up the lives of several characters following independence. These offer a reasonable guide to major developments in the country, including the 2006 crisis and the shooting of the president in 2008, but again the material is thinner; several of Cristalis's friends have left. The rest of the work has, however, come into sharper focus with a revision; the characters and their motivations and frustrations have been given more space at the expense of the journalist's gloss.