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 five-hundredth 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.
“A work of tremendous ambition … A fantastic, wide-ranging family saga. Dorfman creates a disturbing portrait of Chile in the early 1990s.” –Boston Globe
“Wonderfully peopled with dppelgangers, metafictional turns and doses of myth and magic. It affirms Ariel Dorfman's place, alongside Vargo Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as one of the finest voices in contemporary Latin American storytelling.” –Dominic Bradbury, Times of London
“The writing is vital, urgent, energetic, the twists and turns of the plot ingeniously unpredictable: a magicians box of tricks.” –Brian Martin, Financial Times
“A fascinating read … worth every labyrinthine page!” –Chris Searle, Morning Star
“This is an astonishing book … brilliantly constructed … a wonderful, rumbustious and entertaining novel.” –Tom Rosenthal, Daily Mail UK
