The Nanny and the Iceberg - Hardcover

Dorfman, Ariel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374218986 ISBN 13: 9780374218980

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1999

Synopsis

Conceived at the exact moment Che Guevara was being buried in Bolivia, Gabriel Mckenzie lives a decidedly unromantic life, mostly in Manhattan, until, at twenty-three, he decides to do something about his perpetual virginity and heads back to his native Chile for a series of wild adventures.

About this title

Review:

A Chilean exile in New York, 23-year-old Gabriel McKenzie has a serious sexual complex: the specter of his father, a modern-day Don Juan, makes him fail every time in the bedroom. In Ariel Dorfman's keen comedy The Nanny and the Iceberg, Gabriel goes home with his mother in hopes of solving his problem. Dorfman marvelously tangles this story up with the intricacies of post-Pinochet Chilean politics. Gabriel was conceived the night of Che Guevara's burial. The next day, his father bet his best friend that he would have sex every day for the next 25 years, while his friend bet that he would become the most powerful man in the country. When Gabriel returns to Chile, both men are on track to win. This is also the year in which Chile is preparing to send a chunk of ice from Antarctica to Seville for the 1992 World's Fair (which actually happened). Our hero enmeshes himself and his family in this politically sensitive project, thinking that by putting both parents on the ice-collecting boat he can solve his bedroom complex. "That," says Gabriel, "was my blueprint for sexual success; like in some crazy porno Disney film for kids, I had to get my parents back together again." Of course, his problems are more complicated than that. As Dorfman tracks Gabriel's journey--in which his old nanny is powerfully present--he unleashes some of the major themes of existence: politics, family, lust, and anger. With a marksman's skill, he nails much of what's important in life and what's funny about it. The Nanny and the Iceberg lets life be messy, just as it is. --Katherine Anderson

About the Author:

Ariel Dorfman holds the Walter Hines Page chair at Duke University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0374218986
• ISBN 13: 9780374218980
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 357