The Nanny and the Iceberg

by Ariel Dorfman

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Conceived the night of Che Guevara's burial in 1967, Gabriel McKenzie is inextricably bound up in the history and politics of his native Chile. Twenty-four years on, and still a virgin, Gabriel returns from Manhattan exile to confront his legacy: a Don Juan father and a country preparing for the 500th anniversary of America's "discovery". Into Gabriel's quest for manhood and identity enter one iceberg, a faithful if eccentric nanny and a whole host of fantastical characters. Rabelaisian, show more picaresque and erotic, this is a tour de force from one of Latin America's foremost writers. show less

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Con La Nana y el iceberg asistimos a una deslumbrante combinación de aventura, erotismo, suspense y humor desde ese Chile postPinochet marcado explosivamente por la historia. Un relato en el que la violencia y la represión actúan en forma de ecos de fondo...

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Born in Buenos Aires in 1942, Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean citizen. A supporter of Salvador Allende, he was forced into exile and has lived in the United States for many years. Since writing his legendary essay, "How to Read Donald Duck", Dorfman has built up an impressive body of work that has translated into more than thirty languages. Besides show more poetry, essays and novels--"Hard Rain" (Readers International, 1990), winner of the Sudamericana Award; "Widows" (Pluto Press, 1983); "The Last Song of Manuel Sendero" (Viking, 1987); "Mascara" (Viking, 1988); "Konfidenz" (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995)--he has written plays, including "Death and the Maiden", and produced in ninety countries. He has won various international awards, including two Kennedy Center Theatre Awards. With his son, Rodrigo, he received an award for best television drama in Britain for "Prisoners of Time" in 1996. A professor at Duke University, Dorfman lives in Durham, North Carolina. (Publisher Provided) Ariel Dorfman, Dorfman is a Walter Hines Page Research Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies and has a Licenciatura in Comparative Literature from the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, 1965. He has taught at the Universidad de Chile, the Sorbonne (Paris IV) and the University of Amsterdam. Dorfman has written essays that include "How to Read Donald Duck" (coll. With Armand Mattlelart, 1971), "The Empire's Old Clothes" (1983) and "Someone Writes to the Future: Essays on Contemporary Latin American Fiction" (1991). He has also written a collection of poetry titled "Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance" (1988) and a collection of stories titled "My House Is One Fire." His novels include "Widows" (1983), "The Last Song of Manuel Sendero" (1986), "Mascara" (1988), "Hard Rain" (1990), "Konfidenz" (1995), and "The Nanny and the Iceburg" (1999). The play "Widows" won a New American Plays Award from the Kennedy Center and "Reader" won the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center. "Death and the Maiden" also won many awards and was made into a Roman Polanski film and "Mascara" (with son Rodrigo Dorfman) premiered in Bonn in 1998. He created a collection of his plays, "The Resistance Trilogy," which includes "Death and the Maiden," "Reader," and "Widows." (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1999
Important places
Chile
Epigraph
It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.
-- Walter Benjamin
Recntly, in Zimbabwe, ... I heard stories of rogue elephants gone beserk after culls during which they were isolated and relocated after witnessing the killing of the matriarch elephants, who carry the knowledge and history o... (show all)f the herd and the territory. Elephants react exactly like young men and women react to war or the disintegration of community; they become paranoid, violent, and anti-social.
-- Deena Metzger
First words
October 12, 1992
I now believe that the light I saw earlier was a sign from God and that it was truly the first indication of land. (Prologue)
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And then together we wait, the two of us, his broken hand in my hand, his head in my lap, we wait from so near and so far for your decision, Gabriel McKenzie, we wait like two lovers about to give birth, we wait as if the fate of the world depended on it.

Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Fantasy
DDC/MDS
813Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican fiction in English
LCC
PR9309.9 .D67 .N36Language and LiteratureEnglishEnglish LiteratureEnglish literature: Provincial, local, etc.
BISAC

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Reviews
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Languages
English, Italian, Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish
Media
Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
ISBNs
10