SOURCE: Nash, Susan Smith. Review of Reader, by Ariel Dorfman. World Literature Today 71, no. 1 (winter 1997): 153-54.

In the following review, Nash compliments Dorfman's “chilling” portrayal of political oppression in Reader, drawing parallels to the plot of Death and the Maiden.

Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean citizen living in exile in the U.S., is best known for his play Death and the Maiden, which was made into a major motion picture directed by Roman Polanski. In Reader he has written a chilling, utterly riveting play which was performed at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. Here the issue of political repression comes to the forefront, and the characters wrestle with moral choices and the consequences of questionable decisions made in the past. All takes place in an unnamed South American country where political oppression creates a special and hideous form of terror, pitting family members against one another and toxifying...