SOURCE: "Stay and Fight, or Leave and Love?," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 15, 1988, pp. 3, 13.

[In the following review, Leland gives a plot synopsis of Curfew and comments on the political structures described in the novel as they relate to Donoso's own experiences.]

Fifteen years have passed since the overthrow of Chile's last elected government, the Popular Unity regime of Salvador Allende. Other Latin American nations—Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia—have passed in this period from democracy through dictatorship to democracy again. Chile, however, which for more than half a century maintained one of the continent's proudest liberal traditions, has remained under the heel of the military. An entire generation has now matured beneath the gloomy authoritarianism of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

It is into this world that José Donoso, Chile's most famous living author, thrusts us [with] his new novel, Curfew. Mañungo Vera, a famous protest singer...