Mascara: A Novel - Softcover

Dorfman, Ariel

3.53

91 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583226419 ISBN 13: 9781583226414

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2004

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Mascara delves into the dark terrain of identity and disguise when the lives of three people collide. A nameless man with a face no one remembers has the devastating ability to see and capture on film the brutal truths lurking inside each person he encounters. Oriana, a beautiful woman with the memory of an innocent child, is relentlessly pursued by mysterious figures from her past. Doctor Mavirelli is a brilliant and power-hungry plastic surgeon who controls society’s most prominent figures by shaping their faces. The twining of these three fates plays out in a climactic unmasking.

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About the Author:

ARIEL DORFMAN is considered to be one of “the greatest Latin American novelists” (Newsweek) and one of the United States’ most important cultural and political voices. Dorfman's numerous works of fiction and nonfiction have been translated into more than thirty languages, including Death and the Maiden, which has been produced in over one hundred countries and made into a film by Roman Polanski. Dorfman has won many international awards, including the Sudamericana Award, the Laurence Olivier, and two from the Kennedy Center. He is distinguished professor at Duke University and lives in Durham, North Carolina.

From Library Journal:

Most of this exploration of memory and identity in an unnamed city is narrated by someone who remembers all faces but who can never be recognized. Although the book was written in English, its title is more appropriate in its Spanish definition, "mask"as evidenced by the narrator's confrontation with a plastic surgeon who can make a politician look like an up-and-coming rival. The novel's conception is interesting but, like much of this brilliant Chilean's fiction, fails to sustain the power of his "poems of disappearance." Still, it includes the wonderful tale of a four-and-a-half-year-old who stopped aging after being molested. This story, told by a part of her that secretly kept growing, explaining that people are at birth issued hands used by those who lived before, is first-rate. Ethan Bumas, Fudan Univ., Shanghai
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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