Jose Donoso

has created a hauntingly beautiful novel of contemporary Chile and the human condition. Curfew takes place during a twenty-four-hour period in January 1985. Matilde Neruda, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, has just passed away and Chile's various factions rally to turn the event to their advantage.

For Pinochet's junta it represents a chance to assert political authority; for the intellectuals who had basked in Neruda's light, it is an opportunity to grab the spoils of the estate.