Exorcising Terror

"On October 16, 1998, the world awoke to amazing news: General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, had been arrested by Scotland Yard in England and was awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of torture and genocide. What ensued became one of the most important human rights trials of the last fifty years: for the first time in the twentieth century, a former head of state was being judged by a foreign court." "In Exorcising Terror, author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile and the world, follows every twist and turn of the four-year-old trial in Great Britain, Spain, and Chile, as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Reading like a suspense thriller, filled with courtroom drama and sudden reversals of fortune, the book also addresses some of today's burning issues, made all the more urgent after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. What are the limits of national sovereignty in a globalizing world? How does an ever more interconnected world judge crimes committed against humanity? What role do memory and pain and the rights of the survivors play in this struggle for a new system of justice? But above all, the author, by listening carefully to the voices of Pinochet's many victims, explores how we can purge ourselves of terror and fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace and reconciliation without facing a turbulent and perverse past."--BOOK JACKET.