Ariel Dorfman was born Argentina in 1942 and then lived in Chile. Forced to leave that country in 1973 after the coup by Augusto Pinochet and the death of President Salvador Allende, for whom he was working at the time, he subsequently lived in Paris, Amsterdam, and Washington, D.C., returning to Chile during the dictatorship and then more permanently when democracy was restored in 1990. He currently lives in Durham, N.C., where he holds the Walter Hines Page Chair at Duke University. Since writing his legendary critique of North American cultural imperialism, How to Read Donald Duck, Dorfman has built up an impressive body of work that has been translated into more than forty languages and performed in over 100 countries. Besides poetry, essays and novels— Hard Rain, winner of the Sudamericana Award; Widows; The Last Song of Manuel Sendero; Mascara; Konfidenz; The Nanny and the Iceberg; and Blake's Therapy —he has written plays, including Death and the Maiden, which won, among many awards, the Olivier for Best Play and was made into a feature film by Roman Polanski. He has written short stories, including My House Is on Fire, and general non-fiction including The Empire's Old Clothes and Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. He has won many international awards, including two Kennedy Center Theater Awards. His latest works include the Lowell Thomas Award-winning travel book, Desert Memories; a collection of essays, Other Septembers, Many Americas; and a novel he wrote with his youngest son, Joaquín, Burning City, which has just been optioned as a film. His short story Gringos was awarded a 2006 O. Henry prize, given to the best short stories published that year.
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