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.