SOURCE: Review of Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet, by Ariel Dorfman. Publishers Weekly 249, no. 40 (7 October 2002): 65.

In the following review, the critic commends Exorcising Terror as an “accessible” and “powerful” look at modern Chilean politics.

Acclaimed Chilean novelist Dorfman (Blake's Therapy, etc.) offers a work slim but dense with emotion [Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet]. The author follows the appeals, victories and defeats involved in Spain's, and then Chile's own, attempts to try Augusto Pinochet for crimes he committed as president of Chile in the 1970s and '80s. The tale begins when Dorfman, about to board a plane for San Francisco, first hears the news of Pinochet's detention by Scotland Yard and of Spain's call for extradition to try him for crimes against humanity. As Dorfman follows the case (listening by radio, watching live Webcasts and even sitting...