A billionaire Holocaust survivor hires a writer to uncover the truth of Salvador Allende’s death, and they must confront their own dark histories to find a path forward—for themselves and for our ravaged planet.
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"The Suicide Museum is a thrilling crossroads of genres, where history, chronicle, autofiction, memoir, thriller, and essay converge, and where a complex moral reflection and a call to political rebellion take the form of an investigation into one of the fundamental myths of the twentieth century: the death of Salvador Allende. Ariel Dorfman has written the book of his life." - Javier Cercas
"Ariel Dorfman has created a history book disguised as a mystery, or maybe a mystery written as history. Lodged between memoir and fiction, The Suicide Museum is a labyrinth of mirrors, a tale of one nation, or perhaps all nations, where the tortured are condemned to live alongside their torturers. An intricate, thought-provoking read by a literary magician." - Sandra Cisneros
"The wildly brilliant Ariel Dorfman has outdone himself with this rivetingly original and mesmerizingly profound supernova of a novel...The Suicide Museum is so many perfect things: a globetrotting mystery, a courageous journey into Chile's nightmare past, a tender paean to the bonds that keep us human, but above all it's just about the best book I've read in a decade." - Junot Díaz
"A master storyteller uses the devices of fiction to shine a light on the mysteries of real life--and to push ever deeper into everything that haunts him: what a culminating gift from an essential spokesman for humanity and conscience." - Pico Iyer
"The Suicide Museum is a memoir, a mystery, a tragedy, a philosophical treatise, a song of homecoming, and a spectacular mix of the real and the imagined. In this novel Ariel Dorfman puts his whole literary life on the page--and what a life it has been! For decades Dorfman has written in defiance of the ordinary. He gets to the very pulse of who we are: the social, the political, the artistic, and beyond. Right down to its moment of last-line grace, The Suicide Museum keeps the essential questions alive and, at the same time, joins us all together." - Colum McCann
"The author of Death and the Maiden has done it again: this novel transforms the dark memory of Chile into a meditation on history, guilt, and the traces left by horror. To read this is indispensable on the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet's coup d'etat." - Santiago Roncagliolo
"Ariel Dorfman has created a history book disguised as a mystery, or maybe a mystery written as history. Lodged between memoir and fiction, The Suicide Museum is a labyrinth of mirrors, a tale of one nation, or perhaps all nations, where the tortured are condemned to live alongside their torturers. An intricate, thought-provoking read by a literary magician." - Sandra Cisneros
"The wildly brilliant Ariel Dorfman has outdone himself with this rivetingly original and mesmerizingly profound supernova of a novel...The Suicide Museum is so many perfect things: a globetrotting mystery, a courageous journey into Chile's nightmare past, a tender paean to the bonds that keep us human, but above all it's just about the best book I've read in a decade." - Junot Díaz
"A master storyteller uses the devices of fiction to shine a light on the mysteries of real life--and to push ever deeper into everything that haunts him: what a culminating gift from an essential spokesman for humanity and conscience." - Pico Iyer
"The Suicide Museum is a memoir, a mystery, a tragedy, a philosophical treatise, a song of homecoming, and a spectacular mix of the real and the imagined. In this novel Ariel Dorfman puts his whole literary life on the page--and what a life it has been! For decades Dorfman has written in defiance of the ordinary. He gets to the very pulse of who we are: the social, the political, the artistic, and beyond. Right down to its moment of last-line grace, The Suicide Museum keeps the essential questions alive and, at the same time, joins us all together." - Colum McCann
"The author of Death and the Maiden has done it again: this novel transforms the dark memory of Chile into a meditation on history, guilt, and the traces left by horror. To read this is indispensable on the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet's coup d'etat." - Santiago Roncagliolo
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