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Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 812.54 DOR | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"Suspenseful, riveting . . . Achieves a universality that is movingly personal." -- The New York Times
The explosively provocative, award-winning drama set in a country that has just emerged from a totalitarian dictatorship
Gerardo Escobar has just been chosen to head the commission that will investigate the crimes of the old regime when his car breaks down and he is picked up by the humane doctor Roberto Miranda. But in the voice of this good Samaritan, Gerardo's wife, Paulina Salas, thinks she recognizes another man--the one who raped and tortured her as she lay blindfolded in a military detention center years before.
Relentlessly paced and filled with lethal surprises, Death and the Maiden is an inquest into the darker side of humanity--one in which everyone is implicated and justice itself comes to seem like a fragile, perhaps ambiguous invention.
Author Notes
Born in Buenos Aires in 1942, Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean citizen. A supporter of Salvador Allende, he was forced into exile and has lived in the United States for many years. Since writing his legendary essay, "How to Read Donald Duck", Dorfman has built up an impressive body of work that has translated into more than thirty languages. Besides poetry, essays and novels--"Hard Rain" (Readers International, 1990), winner of the Sudamericana Award; "Widows" (Pluto Press, 1983); "The Last Song of Manuel Sendero" (Viking, 1987); "Mascara" (Viking, 1988); "Konfidenz" (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995)--he has written plays, including "Death and the Maiden", and produced in ninety countries. He has won various international awards, including two Kennedy Center Theatre Awards. With his son, Rodrigo, he received an award for best television drama in Britain for "Prisoners of Time" in 1996. A professor at Duke University, Dorfman lives in Durham, North Carolina.
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Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
A man who helped out a motorist stranded with a flat is taken prisoner by the motorist's wife when he drops by to offer further assistance. She is sure he was the worst of her torturers years ago when she was "detained" by the police of the military regime only recently and incompletely thrown off by the Latin American republic in which Dorfman's new play takes place. The woman tells her attorney husband that she will release the captive when he confesses in detail to his crimes. The husband cajoles and argues with her, and soon it's clear that politically motivated sadism isn't all that's at stake. Men's domination and abuse of women sounds a disturbing ground bass to the brooding and nervous music of this compelling dramatic essay on whether crimes of nature (male) against nature (female) can ever, should ever, be forgiven and forgotten. ~--Ray Olson
Library Journal Review
This powerful political drama and psychological thriller by the noted Chilean writer premiered in London last summer, where it won the Time Out Award for Best Play. In March it opened in the United States on Broadway, with direction by Mike Nichols and starring Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gene Hackman. The play focuses on a woman who finds herself in the position to exact revenge upon a man whom she believes to have been her torturer 15 years earlier. In telling this story, the author also addresses the dilemmas which touch all our lives: innocence and evil, truth and lies, forgiveness, and revenge. This is a worthwhile addition to modern drama collections.-- Howard E. Miller, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Missouri Lib., St. Louis (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
