If you care about torture—and I know I do—then here's a good book for you: Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee. Set in an imaginary frontier town, just at the edge of the reach of the Empire, and just at the edge of the reach of the barbarians, our protagonist does just what we all do: postpone boredom, seek companionship, and weigh difficult moral choices, not to say act on them.

The writing is extremely lucid and easy to read (I read the whole thing on one long plane trip—uncommon for me), and the protagonist is immanently sympathetic, just as much a monster as any of us. He faces, more directly, the same moral questions that you or I (my Unknown) face each day: about how to see Others, how to deflect or apply violence, and how to quench desire and keep right-relations.

Torture pervades the novel, and the position where our hero finds himself leads us to consider the ethics of standing by while torture is perpetrated: the problem of having some modest power, and leaving it unutilised. It is a question I find very pertinent today, as my own government, financed by my labors, applies torture to men, both innocent and guilty, in Guantanamo Bay.

But like a fool, instead of giving her a good time I oppressed her with gloom. Truly, the world ought to belong to the singers and dancers! Futile bitterness, idle melancholy, empty regrets! I blow out the lamp, sit with my chin on my fist staring towards the fire, listening to my stomach rumble.