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 courtroom drama and sudden reversals of fortune, Exorcising Terror at the same time addresses some of today's most burning issues, made all the more urgent after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. What are the limits of national sovereignty in a globalizing world? How does an ever more interconnected world judge crimes committed against humanity? What role do memory and pain and the rights of the survivors play in this struggle for a new system of justice? But above all, the author, by listening carefully to the voices of Pinochet's many victims, explores how we can purge ourselves of terror and fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace and reconciliation without facing a turbulent and perverse past.
ARIEL DORFMAN is considered to be one of “the greatest Latin American novelists” (Newsweek) and one of the United States’ most important cultural and political voices. A Chilean-American author born in Argentina, his numerous award-winning works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published in more than fifty languages. His play, Death and the Maiden, which has been performed in over one hundred countries, was made into a film by Roman Polanski. Among his works are the novels Widows, The Nanny and the Iceberg, Mascara and Konfidenz, and the memoirs Heading South, Looking North and Feeding on Dreams, as well the play Manifesto for Another World. He has also published collections of essays, including Homeland Security Ate My Speech: Messages from the End of the World, and Other Septembers, Many Americas. He contributes to major papers worldwide, including frequent comments in The New York Times, The Nation and the New York Review of Books. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Playboy, Index on Censorship and many other magazines and journals. Other works include Darwin's Ghosts, The Rabbit's Rebellion, and Exorcising Terror: The Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet. A prominent human rights activist, he lives with his wife Angélica in Chile and Durham, North Carolina, where he is the Walter Hines Page Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University.
