Death and the Maiden

“Suspenseful, riveting . . . Achieves a universality that is movingly personal.” —The New York Times

The explosively provocative, award-winning drama set in a country that has just emerged from a totalitarian dictatorship

Gerardo Escobar has just been chosen to head the commission that will investigate the crimes of the old regime when his car breaks down and he is picked up by the humane doctor Roberto Miranda. But in the voice of this good Samaritan, Gerardo's wife, Paulina Salas, thinks she recognizes another man—the one who raped and tortured her as she lay blindfolded in a military detention center years before.

Relentlessly paced and filled with lethal surprises, Death and the Maiden is an inquest into the darker side of humanity—one in which everyone is implicated and justice itself comes to seem like a fragile, perhaps ambiguous invention.Winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play

“Like Sophocles . . . a terrifying moral thriller which combines brilliant theatricality with clear thought and fierce compassion.”
—Sunday Times (London)Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean-American poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and humans rights activist. His books have been published in over 50 languages, and his works include How to Read Donald Duck, Darwin's Ghosts, Cauvitos, and Allegro. He lives with his family in Durham, North Carolina, where he now holds the Walter Hines Page chair at Duke University.