Exorcising Terror

'This is an excellent, quick and powerful read, accessible to everyone' Publishers Weekly

On October 16th, 1998, the world awoke to amazing news: General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, had been arrested by Scotland Yard in England & was awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of torture & 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.

Renowned author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile & the world, followed every twist & turn of the four year trial in Great Britain, Spain & Chile as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Told as a suspense thriller, filled with court-room drama & sudden reversals of fortune, the book at the same time addresses some of today's most burning issues, made all the more urgent after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 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 & pain & 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 can we purge ourselves of terror & fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace & reconciliation without facing a turbulent & perverse past.

From Dorfman's emotional reconstitution of the many phases of Pinochet's trial, both in London & in Santiago, there slowly emerges a picture of a victory, both for the people of Chile & for people the world over, serving as a prelude to the prosecution of other Heads of State - such as Milosevic in The Hague - but as a warning to many powerful men around the world - like Henry Kissinger - who felt they would never be held accountable for sufferings inflicted on faraway civilians.