Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet (Open Media Series) - Softcover

On October 16, 1998, the world awoke to amazing news: General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, had been arrested by Scotland Yard in England and was awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of torture and genocide. What ensued became one of the most important human rights trials of the last fifty years: for the first time in the twentieth century, a former head of state was being judged by a foreign court.
In Exorcising Terror, author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile and the world, follows every twist and turn of the four-year-old trial in Great Britain, Spain, and Chile, as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Reading like a suspense thriller, filled with courtroom drama and sudden reversals of fortune, the book also addresses some of today's burning issues, made all the more urgent after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. What are the limits of national sovereignty in a globalizing world? How does an ever more interconnected world judge crimes committed against humanity? What role do memory and pain and the rights of the survivors play in this struggle for a new system of justice? But above all, the author, by listening carefully to the voices of Pinochet's many victims, explores how we can purge ourselves of terror and fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace and reconciliation without facing a turbulent and perverse past.

ARIEL DORFMAN is considered to be one of “the greatest Latin American novelists” (Newsweek) and one of the United States’ most important cultural and political voices. Dorfman's numerous works of fiction and nonfiction have been translated into more than thirty languages, including Death and the Maiden, which has been produced in over one hundred countries and made into a film by Roman Polanski. Dorfman has won many international awards, including the Sudamericana Award, the Laurence Olivier, and two from the Kennedy Center. He is distinguished professor at Duke University and lives in Durham, North Carolina.