ABOUT THE BOOK

Conceived the night of Che Guevara's burial in 1967, Gabriel McKenzie is inextricably bound up in the history and politics of his native Chile. Twenty-four years on, and still a virgin, Gabriel returns from Manhattan exile to confront his legacy: a Don Juan father and a country preparing for the 500th anniversary of America's 'discovery'. Into Gabriel's quest for manhood and identity enter one iceberg, a faithful if eccentric nanny and a whole host of fantastical characters.

Novelist, essayist, short story writer, poet, playwright and scriptwriter, Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean expatriate who was born in Argentina in 1942. Among his novels are 'The Last Song of Manuel Sendero', 'Mascara', 'Widows' (which he dramatised for the stage with Tony Kushner) and 'Konfidenz'. He has published a poetry collection, 'Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance', and his plays include 'Reader' and the internationally acclaimed 'Death and the Maiden', which has also been filmed by Roman Polanski.

He is also the author of 'The Empire's Old Clothes' and 'Some Write to the Future' and, with Armand Mattelart, of 'How to Read Donald Duck'. His most recent publication is the memoir, 'Heading South, Looking North'. Ariel Dorfman now lives with his family in North Carolina, where he holds the Walter Hines Page Chair at Duke University.