Ariel Dorfman

A Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker
A billionaire Holocaust survivor hires a writer to uncover the truth of Salvador Allende’s death, and they must confront their own dark histories to find a path forward—for themselves and for our ravaged planet.
An expansive, engrossing mystery for fans of Gabriel García Márquez, Margaret Atwood, and Bill McKibben, from the acclaimed author of Death and the Maiden.
Ariel...

"Rabbits don't exist." So decrees the new king, the Wolf of all Wolves, after conquering the rabbits' homeland. He refuses to allow even one small, fluffy tail or long, soft ear into his kingdom. He orders the birds to broadcast this message far and wide. And he summons the old monkey to photograph him in his royal finery, performing his royal deeds. But in his darkroom, the monkey sees something strange developing in the photos. Is that a floppy...

From the author of Death and the Maiden and other works that explore relations of power in the postcolonial world comes the story of a man whose distant past comes to haunt him. Is the sordid story behind human zoos that flourished in Europe in the nineteenth century connected somehow to a boy's life a hundred years later? On Fitzroy Foster's fourteenth birthday on September 11, 1981, he receives an unexpected and unwelcome gift: when his father...

Blake's Therapy is a whirlwind ride through the desires of one man to find something real in a virtual world. After suffering a mental breakdown, Graham Blake checks into the Corporate Life Therapy Institute, where the self-assured, silver-tongued Dr. Carl Tolgate has prepared a strange, shocking, and erotic treatment. Now Blake must find out, before it is too late, who is controlling his life, his company's future, and his own heart. A work of intense...

Renowned author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile and the world, followed every twist and turn of the four year old trial in Great Britain, Spain and Chile as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Told as a suspense thriller, filled with court-room drama and sudden reversals of fortune, the book at the same time addresses some of today's most burning issues,...

"You don't know us," the writer said. "We're different here in Chile." Ariel Dorfman's early novel Hard Rain was written in the last chaotic months before the Pinochet bloodbath ended Allende's elected government. The publication of this book to acclaim outside Chile enabled the author to escape into exile. Here is all the drama and tension of those last months and days, vividly delivered through the eyes and experience of one of Latin America's greatest...

"A multifaceted journey that is geographical, personal and political . . . A complex, nuanced view of United States–Latin American politics and relations of the last forty some years." - Durham Herald-Sun "One of the most important voices coming out of South America." - Salman Rushdie In September 1973, the military took power in Chile, and Ariel Dorfman, a young leftist allied with President Allende, was forced to flee for his life. In Feeding...

Mascara delves into the dark terrain of identity and disguise when the lives of three people collide. A nameless man with a face no one remembers has the devastating ability to see and capture on film the brutal truths lurking inside each person he encounters. Oriana, a beautiful woman with the memory of an innocent child, is relentlessly pursued by mysterious figures from her past. Doctor Mavirelli is a brilliant and power-hungry plastic surgeon...

Combining elements of memoir, political theory, and literary criticism, Ariel Dorfman's Homeland Security Ate My Speech is an emotionally raw yet measured assessment of the United States after the election of Donald Trump. Dorfman, writing with a bifurcated Latino-American identity, highlights the troubling parallels between Trump and repressive regimes of the past. Specifically, Dorfman relates the election of Trump to the CIA-led coup that installed...

First published in 1971 in Chile, where the entire third edition was dumped into the ocean by the Chilean Navy and bonfires were held to destroy earlier editions, How to Read Donald Duck reveals the imperialist, capitalist ideology at work in our most beloved cartoons.Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney-curiously parentless, marginalized, always short of cash-Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart dissect the narratives of dependency and...