This Side of Innocence, tells the story of one man's run-in with the secret police of his unnamed, war-torn country. The novel's real story, however, is about the deeply obscure events of a personal encounter with tyranny -- the tyranny of the instability and chaos of a country at war with itself and consequently preyed upon by internal and external threes. In the end, we are left with the story of how one man (or country) can, innocently, invent his own executioner.