The Suicide Museum by Ariel Dorfman
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An expansive, engrossing mystery for fans of Gabriel García Márquez, Margaret Atwood, and Bill McKibben, from the acclaimed author of Death and the Maiden.
Ariel needed money, and Joseph Hortha had it. Bound by gratitude toward the late Chilean president and a persistent need to know whether murder or suicide ended his life during the 1973 coup, the two men embark on an investigation that will take them from Washington DC and New York, to Santiago and Valparaíso, and finally to London. They encounter an unforgettable cast of characters: a wedding photographer who can predict a couple’s future; a policeman in pursuit of the serial killer targeting refugees; a revolutionary caught trying to assassinate a dictator; and, above all, the complex women who support them along the way, for their own obscure reasons.
Before Ariel and Joseph can resolve a quest full of dangers and enigmas, they must help each other come to terms with guilt and trauma from personal catastrophes hidden deep in the past. What begins as an intriguing literary caper unfolds into a propulsive, philosophical saga about love, family, machismo, fascism, and exile that asks what we owe the world, one another, and ourselves. By boldly mixing fiction and reality, imagination and history, The Suicide Museum explores the limits of the novelistic genre, expanding it in an unsuspected and exceptional way.
Year first published: 2023
