Hard Rain

by Ariel Dorfman, George Shivers (Translator)

Overview

"You don't know us," the writer said. "We're different here in Chile."

Ariel Dorfman's early novel Hard Rain was written in the last chaotic months before the Pinochet bloodbath ended Allende's elected government. The publication of this book to acclaim outside Chile enabled the author to escape into exile. 

Here is all the drama and tension of those last months and days, vividly delivered through the eyes and experience of one of Latin America's greatest writers. The tragedy of fifty years ago now comes alive again, in George Shivers' expert English translation.

"That was Chile: all these individual wills, thoughts, journeys, betrayals, acts of generosity, acts of faith, obscenities, evasions;...you'd have to freeze time and bring every life to a halt so that no one would forget what had happened at that precise moment..." - from Hard Rain



Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781887378444
Publisher:	Readers International
Publication date:	08/10/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	348
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Born in 1942 in Argentina, ARIEL DORFMAN as a young academic and writer served as a cultural adviser to President Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973. During this time he became know more broadly as co-author of How to Read Donald Duck (1971) from which he includes snippets in the Tarzan chapter of Hard Rain, his first novel (1973). Hard Rain won a literary prize in Argentina that allowed him and his family to leave Chile after the Pinochet coup. In exile, Dorfman has become famous as a prolific writer and fierce critic of Pinochet and other despots. He defines himself as an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist (Hard Rain, The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, Mascara) , playwright (Death and the Maiden, Widows, Reader), essayist (The Empire's Old Clothes, Someone Writes to the Future, Heading South, Looking North), academic, and human rights activist.
GEORGE SHIVERS is a distinguished Spanish-English and Portuguese English literary translator who was a professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages at Washington College for many years and is still engaged in teaching in Maryland. Besides Hard Rain, his translations include several other works by Ariel Dorfman: The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, My House Is on Fire, and Someone Writes to the Future. He has also translated works by the Brazilian writer Márcio Souza. George Shivers wrote many of the Spanish-English translations for articles in the volume Guide to Documentary Sources for the Andes, published by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Acclaim for Hard Rain

Preface to the English Translation

All you need is a body

That's all I can tell you

Rough Draft

Commentaries

The time had come

Dear Mr Reyes

He has ten minutes

Birds and Worms

Mama was waiting for me

Final Term Paper

The Literary-Artistic Exhibition SHIT

Having read all too patiently

JAP-ening

Prologue

I'd like a love story

That was before Jane arrived

It is necessary to anticipate

Dear Mr Reyes

On the other side of the mirror

Probably an accident

Chaos and consciousness-raising

Final Project