About the Author

ARIEL DORFMAN has been hailed by the Washington Post as a “world novelist of the first order” and by Newsweek as “one of the greatest Latin American novelists.” A Chilean expatriate, now professor at Duke University, Dorfman has seen his works translated into more than thirty languages and his plays performed in over one hundred countries. His play Death and the Maiden was made into a film by Roman Polanski. His most recent books are Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet (Seven Stories Press, 2003) and Desert Memories: Journeys through the Chilean North (National Geographic Books, 2004). His novels Widows, Konfidenz, and The Nanny and the Iceberg have just been reissued. Two of Dorfman’s new plays will appear in 2005, The Other Side in London’s West End, and Purgatorio on Broadway. He lives with his wife, Angélica, in Durham, North Carolina.