Product Description

"A tantalizingly ambiguous web of deceit, intrigue, and obsession, its layers of meaning gradually revealed. . . . The reader is left in delicious puzzlement."-Publishers Weekly

Mascara, Ariel Dorfman's haunting English-language debut novel, delves into the dark terrain of identity and disguise when the lives of three people collide. A nameless man with a face no one remembers has the devastating ability to see and capture on film the brutal truths lurking inside each person he encounters. Oriana, a beautiful woman with the memory of an innocent child, is relentlessly pursued by mysterious figures from her past. Doctor Mavirelli is a brilliant and power-hungry plastic surgeon who controls society's most prominent figures by controlling their most important asset: their faces. As their three fates cross, present and past deceptions unravel upon each other until the characters find themselves irrevocably unmasked.

Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean expatriate whose works include the acclaimed memoir Heading South, Looking North; the novels The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, Konfidenz and Widows; and the play Death and the Maiden, which was made into a film by Roman Polanski. Dorfman's plays have been performed in more than 100 countries, and he is the recipient of numerous international awards in drama and literature. Dorfman contributes to major newspapers worldwide and is a distinguished professor at Duke University. He lives with his wife in Durham, North Carolina.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1617782 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A paranoiac monologue by a nameless man with a face that no one recognizes or remembers reveals a life of carefully constructed obscurity. "Chilean exile Dorfman's latest work (after The Last Song of Manuel Sendero ) is a tantalizingly ambiguous web of deceit, intrigue and obsession," said PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Most of this exploration of memory and identity in an unnamed city is narrated by someone who remembers all faces but who can never be recognized. Although the book was written in English, its title is more appropriate in its Spanish definition, "mask"as evidenced by the narrator's confrontation with a plastic surgeon who can make a politician look like an up-and-coming rival. The novel's conception is interesting but, like much of this brilliant Chilean's fiction, fails to sustain the power of his "poems of disappearance." Still, it includes the wonderful tale of a four-and-a-half-year-old who stopped aging after being molested. This story, told by a part of her that secretly kept growing, explaining that people are at birth issued hands used by those who lived before, is first-rate. Ethan Bumas, Fudan Univ., Shanghai
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean expatriate and "literary grandmaster" (Time) whose works include the acclaimed memoir Heading South, Looking North, and the novels The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, Konfidenz, and Widows. His plays have been performed in more than one hundred countries, and Death and the Maiden was made into a film by Roman Polanski. The recipient of many international awards, Dorfman contributes to major newspapers worldwide and is a distinguished professor at Duke University. He lives with his wife in Durham, North Carolina.