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Born in Buenos Aires on May 6, 1942, Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, plays, operas, musicals, poems, journalism and essays in both Spanish and English.

Born in Argentina in 1942, Ariel Dorfman 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, he wandered the globe as an exile, finally settling down in the United States, where he is now Walter Hines Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University. Dorfman’s acclaimed work, which includes 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, covers almost every genre available (plays, novels, poetry, short stories, fiction, essays, journalism, opinion pieces, memoirs, screenplays). 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 and Cautivos, as well as the children’s story, The Rabbits’ Rebellion. He contributes regularly to major newspapers and magazines around the world and is active in the defense of human rights.