by Ariel Dorfman

Ariel Dorfman was born in Argentina in 1942, and two years later moved with his family to the United States. His father relocated the family to Chile in 1954 and Dorfman became a naturalized Chilean citizen in 1967. Like many Chilean artists and writers, Dorfman supported the Marxist president Salvador Allende and was forced into exile after a successful 1973 military coup under General Augusto Pinochet, in which Allende died. During his exile, Dorfman lived in Argentina, France, the Netherlands, and eventually the United States. He continued to write about the atrocities that were being committed by the Chilean dictatorship in his poetry and novels. In 1983 Dorfman was officially allowed to return to Chile, but he would not move back to his country until Pinochet left office and a democratic government was restored under elected President Patricio Aylwin in 1990. A year later Dorfman...