That women see a lot of disturbing things in the story collection What She Saw should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the work of the Argentine-born Chilean American author Ariel Dorfman (The Suicide Museum; Konfidenz). Throughout his career, Dorfman has melded themes of love and war, with a frequent focus on the military coup that ousted Chilean president Salvador Allende, for whom Dorfman worked as a cultural adviser in the early 1970s. Dorfman returns to those themes in the eight pieces in this trenchant compilation.
Most of these pieces highlight a female character who is either a witness to proceedings or a victim of atrocities. In the latter category is the long opening story, "Corderita," a devastating work about the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. The married protagonists met in Santiago in 1973, when they marched in defense of the Allende government. Decades later, the man has lost his wife on a train to Bourges, where she is scheduled to testify against the captor who tortured her. Her husband, meanwhile, wrestles with whether to finally reveal his involvement in her ordeal.
Other stories are equally immersive. One of the more surreal pieces is "Blank," a story about a firing squad told from a remarkable perspective: one of the 12 bullets. This story is a singular take on war, with the bullet articulating a statement that applies equally to most of this collection's protagonists: "I am about to find out who I really am." What She Saw is another excellent work by a dedicated polemicist unafraid to tackle the political travesties of his country and his era. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer