Ariel Dorfman

Ariel Dorfman was born in Argentina in 1942 and spent ten years as a child in New York, until his family was forced out of the United States by the anti-communist frenzy stirred by Joe McCarthy. The Dorfmans ended up in Chile, where Ariel spent his adolescence and youth, living through the Allende revolution and the subsequent resistance inside Chile and abroad after the dictatorship that overthrew Allende in 1973. Accompanied by his wife Angélica, Ariel wandered the globe as an exile, eventually settling down in the United States, where he holds the position of Walter Hines Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University. He is the internationally acclaimed author of many plays, novels, poetry, short stories, essays, and works of journalism and memoir, including the play and film “Death and the Maiden” (currently slated for a revival on Broadway), and the classic text about cultural imperialism, How to Read Donald Duck, recently reissued by OR Books. His books have been published in over fifty languages and his plays performed in more than a hundred countries. His most recent books are the novels Darwin's Ghosts, Cautivos, and The Compensation Bureau, as well as the children’s story, The Rabbits' Rebellion, and the poetry collection Voices From the Other Side of Death. He contributes regularly to major newspapers and magazines around the world and is active in the defense of human rights. His next novel, The Suicide Museum, was published by Other Press in September 2023.