Konfidenz

Ariel Dorfman was born on 6 May 1942. He is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. One of his plays, Death and the Maiden, has won the Laurence Olivier award. A citizen of the US since 2004, he has been a professor of Literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.

A political novel as well as an acute study in character and obsession, complete with interspersed commentary apparently addressed to the reader and the novelist equally, this brief, tightly constructed work addresses multiple themes. Dorfman uses the tension of an unstable political situation to force the reader into questioning his characters' stated truths, as well as their motivations. Exhilarating for its finely tuned unfolding but somber in its conclusions, Konfidenz demands a fundamental re-examination of the nature of trust Publishers Weekly Dorfman in previous work has explored the space across which political power and private morality glare at each other, and Konfidenz follows suit. From the first page, this slim novel invokes the menace of the former in order to underscore and explore the vulnerability of the latter -- Sven Birkerts The New York Times