The British Law Lords' decision on the extradition of General Augusto Pinochet to Spain lent an added impetus to Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman's first visit to Belfast last week, ostensibly to promote his latest novel. The Nanny and the Iceberg is part epic and part detective tale, involving sex, betrayal and modernisation. It revolves essentially round the newly democratic Chile's attempt to tow an iceberg in the Atlantic from America to Spain. At the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast, he was given a warm reception. But The Nanny and the Iceberg is, as he acknowledges, "not a typical Ariel Dorfman novel".
"When people say Ariel Dorfman they would primarily think of Death and the Maiden, so they think of a person who deals with death and suffering and resistance, and not necessarily someone who is playing with reality, as I have done this time. If you look at my work it has always been playful but I haven't been able to develop that, if you like because of the Pinochet thing," Dorfman explains.
Sitting in Belfast's Europa Hotel, he admits that much of what he has written since the coup in Chile in 1973 has been about coming to terms with having survived - "the Pinochet thing". It has been a case of what he describes as "an almost obsessive need to write, to fill the void, of what death left in its place, when it, he, or she, decided not to take me".
The guilt of surviving has haunted Dorfman, and the writer has sought to rid himself of Pinochet through words - and to pay tribute to those who didn't survive. Dorfman thought he had exorcised most of the past in his memoir, Heading South, Looking North, but admits there has, in fact, been no has been no escaping Pinochet.
Dorfman is clearly frustrated at having to refer constantly to Death and the Maiden. He has written numerous articles, plays and novels since his exile in 1973, but remains best-known for his political play. It became a Roman Polanski film, and centres around the dilemma of reconciliation and revenge, a tale of victim and torturer.
"I've been blessed all my life and I'm glad that I survived but I'd like to be able to write about whatever I want and not necessarily be confined in this category of a politically-committed writer," he says. "I am that - but I'm also much, much more." When Pinochet ceased to be the president of Chile in 1990, Dorfman stopped working as a journalist, though he "wrote the odd piece" and continued his involvement in human rights campaigns in South Africa and other places around the world. He felt that he, and Chile, had reached another turning point when Pinochet left La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace. Then Pinochet's arrest in Britain forced Dorfman to confront a wealth of unfinished business. He had not yet managed to get Pinochet "out of his head, his life and his bed" and to reengage in an old battle.
"I had just finished The Nanny and the Iceberg a few days before and it was with my editor - and then the bastard does it to me again, and I find myself back in the spotlight."
Over the course of the past couple of months, Dorfman has conducted a prolific number of media interviews and written numerous articles on Pinochet, and whether the former dictator should be made answerable for his crimes in Chile.
"I had thought by writing my memoir I had at least buried the dead. I couldn't bury them in the ground, but the book was my burial ground - a burial ground of words," Dorfman explains. "I had made a mistake."
When the Law Lords ruled last Wednesday that Pinochet he was not immune from prosecution for crimes after 1988, Dorfman spoke of his joy at the verdict. He said that despite the list of indictable offences being reduced from 30 to three, it was still a great day for human rights. The decision by Britain to arrest Pinochet has "at last forced Chile to confront the past", he said.
"You can't move on entirely until you have buried the past well, and for me, it is to deal with Pinochet, and what he has done to us. That's one aspect of it, and the other is that Pinochet is part of the past. It is to do with national identity. This double manoeuvre of getting rid of him and coexisting with him is a very difficult thing to do. In fact, it's the essence of Death and the Maiden," he says.
Dorfman believes this is something people in Northern Ireland primarily, and also people in the Republic, would have an empathy with. "In a sense we have to make peace with Pinochet, yet we don't want to make peace with him. I'm sure it's something that will sound familiar to people here - you've got your victims, your perpetrators, your memories and how do you deal with them as you go through the transition period towards democracy and peace?"
The Troubles, Dorfman says, have become part of the national identity of people in the North, Catholic and Protestant. He believes how the past is dealt with will ultimately determine the success of the peace process - but he has great faith it will work out. "You have been shown to be very creative and very courageous. There's no doubt you have to work harder for peace than for war and let's see where the courage comes from to make this work," he adds.
The Nanny and the Iceberg is published by Sceptre, price £10 in the UK
