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 playful novel and exceptionally well written. It has been a difficult transition for many of the 'political' writers of the 1970s to write in a contemporary, "less immediate" Latin America...Dorfman, with this novel, manages the transition well. The novel has been likened to those produced by Vargas Llosa and is worthy of this high praise. My only reservation is the exceptionally hermetic last two (or so) paragraphs...nevertheless, if the journey is more worthy than the final destination, the novel will not disappoint at all.
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