Bom in Argentina in 1942, Ariel Dorfman moved to New York with his family in 1944 after his father lost his university position because of his political opposition to the military government which preceded Juan Per?n's presidency. His family moved to Chile when he was twelve and he remained there until 1973 when he was forced into exile by the coup of General Augusto Pinochet which ousted Salvador Allende. In his writing Dorfman has attempted to come to grips with the causes and effects of those traumatic events. Protesting the abuses of authoritarian governments in the Southern Cone and elsewhere, his work is a passionate plea for human rights not only in Latin America but around the world. Widows, a novel, deals with the problem of the missing. The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, perhaps his most ambitious novel to date, treats the problems and effects of exile. The latest novel, Mascara, is a general treatment of the themes of power and evil. The poems of The Last Waltz in Santiago are a moving personal testament to the events which took place in Chile under the Pinochet regime. Dorfman has also written a series of essays, collected in The Empire's Old Clothes and How to Read Donald Duck, in which he investigates the underlying ideological and political ideas of such innocent heroes as Babar, Donald Duck, and the Lone Ranger. Since 1985 he has taught at Duke University. With democratic reforms taking place in Chile, Dorfman plans to return there permanently in the 95
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Dorfman et al. (1991) studied this question.