The Suicide Museum

Description

A billionaire Holocaust survivor hires a writer to uncover the truth of Salvador Allende’s death, and they must confront their own dark histories to find a path forward—for themselves and for our ravaged planet.

An expansive, engrossing mystery for fans of Gabriel García Márquez, Margaret Atwood, and Bill McKibben, from the acclaimed author of Death and the Maiden.

Ariel needed money, and Joseph Hortha had it. Bound by gratitude toward the late Chilean president and a persistent need to know whether murder or suicide ended his life during the 1973 coup, the two men embark on an investigation that will take them from Washington DC and New York, to Santiago and Valparaíso, and finally to London. They encounter an unforgettable cast of characters: a wedding photographer who can predict a couple’s future; a policeman in pursuit of the serial killer targeting refugees; a revolutionary caught trying to assassinate a dictator; and, above all, the complex women who support them along the way, for their own obscure reasons. 
    Before Ariel and Joseph can resolve a quest full of dangers and enigmas, they must help each other come to terms with guilt and trauma from personal catastrophes hidden deep in the past. What begins as an intriguing literary caper unfolds into a propulsive, philosophical saga about love, family, machismo, fascism, and exile that asks what we owe the world, one another, and ourselves. By boldly mixing fiction and reality, imagination and history, The Suicide Museum explores the limits of the novelistic genre, expanding it in an unsuspected and exceptional way.“An intricate examination of guilt and grief…evocative of Philip Roth. Its prose is brainy and confident, building momentum through the intensity of its ideas…profoundly moving.” —New York Times Book Review
 
“Set largely in the nineteen-nineties…[The Suicide Museum is] also a novel that looks toward the future…exhilarating…In what feels like Dorfman’s parting admonition to us to act before it’s too late…he insists that the myth of Allende retains its utility, even in a world the man himself wouldn’t recognize.” —The New Yorker
 
“A thriller nested inside a literary novel nested inside a memoir…playful and intriguing.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
 
“Engrossing…an erudite riddle that gracefully melds history and fiction, this feels like the capstone to Dorfman’s literary career. It’s a brainy, dazzling treat.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Gripping and expansive…Unlike most thrillers, this cerebral tale also serves as a history lesson and a philosophical contemplation on humanity’s shared fate, making it a thought-provoking high point in Dorfman’s prolific literary career.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“[A] wide-ranging novel that’s both complex investigation and emotional history.” —Literary Hub
 
“[Dorfman’s] life and career demonstrate a sensitivity to the themes of liberation, repression, and exile—themes he takes up in his idiosyncratic new book…Dorfman poses questions of truth, guilt, memory, responsibility, and commitment—all of which bear thinking about.” —Jewish Book Council
 
“Dorfman opens a wide tunnel into history and tackles well-known events in a surprising, genre-twisting manner…[He] crafts a world of nuanced sentiment and expanded belonging as we continue to reimagine the world according to Allende’s legacy…Dorfman is a global writer at a time when we need his magnitude of understanding, as well as his gentle loyalty to roots, the Earth, and memory, which together have sustained the author’s lifelong belief in human beings and justice.” —Markaz Review 

“A unique and uniquely gripping book, a mix of memoir and fiction of a sort I’ve never seen before.” —Tom Engelhardt, SouthernCross Review

“The Suicide Museum is a memoir, a mystery, a tragedy, a philosophical treatise, a song of homecoming, and a spectacular mix of the real and the imagined. In this novel Ariel Dorfman puts his whole literary life on the page—and what a life it has been! For decades Dorfman has written in defiance of the ordinary. He gets to the very pulse of who we are: the social, the political, the artistic, and beyond. Right down to its moment of last-line grace, The Suicide Museum keeps the essential questions alive and, at the same time, joins us all together.” —Colum McCann, National Book Award–winning author of Let the Great World Spin

“A master storyteller uses the devices of fiction to shine a light on the mysteries of real life—and to push ever deeper into everything that haunts him: what a culminating gift from an essential spokesman for humanity and conscience.” —Pico Iyer, national bestselling author of The Half Known Life

“Ariel Dorfman has created a history book disguised as a mystery, or maybe a mystery written as history. Lodged between memoir and fiction, The Suicide Museum is a labyrinth of mirrors, a tale of one nation, or perhaps all nations, where the tortured are condemned to live alongside their torturers. An intricate, thought-provoking read by a literary magician.” —Sandra Cisneros, national bestselling author of The House on Mango Street

“The wildly brilliant Ariel Dorfman has outdone himself with this rivetingly original and mesmerizingly profound supernova of a novel…The Suicide Museum is so many perfect things: a globetrotting mystery, a courageous journey into Chile’s nightmare past, a tender paean to the bonds that keep us human, but above all it’s just about the best book I’ve read in a decade.” —Junot Díaz, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“At the crossroads of history and memory, the masterful Ariel Dorfman has given us a portrait of a generation that lived under the shadow of Fidel Castro and Che, and then suffered the destruction of the alternate vision of socialism offered by Salvador Allende—a tragedy that haunts us still.” —Alma Guillermoprieto, author of Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution

“In this engrossing novel, Ariel Dorfman has found the perfect sweet spot where history, politics, and literary fiction blend. Dorfman, like some of his major characters, operates as an archeologist digging into the remains of recent traumas. Anyone interested in how the past impinges on the present and is transformed into art, should read this book.” —Ian Buruma, author of The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II

“Ariel Dorfman is surely the modern-day conscience of Latin America. He is the elegant scribe of its blue sky as well as its iron fist. He is the clear-eyed, loyal witness to its sputtering bids for democracy. The Suicide Museum is the story he was always meant to write. In it, his prodigious talents are everywhere in evidence—in his breathtaking gifts as a storyteller; in his fierce pursuit of history’s truths; in his sly, deliciously wicked humor; in his essential humanity. This is a riveting novel with a large brain, big heart, and a dark secret at its core. It deserves a universe of readers.” —Marie Arana, prize-winning author of American Chica, Bolívar: American Liberator, and Silver, Sword, and Stone

“I was enthralled by Ariel Dorfman’s The Suicide Museum. I have always loved his writing, loved performing his poetry Last Waltz in Santiago, but this work twisted my heart. To be the expat, the outsider without a home, looking for a way back in is so powerful and lonely. His scrupulous search for the truth holds us all to a very high standard.” —Kathleen Turner, Golden Globe Award–winning actress

“A novel that is also an elegy that in its mournful and nostalgic funeral song exalts the figure of Allende as a moral hero of a generation…This is a novel of multiple paths that intersect and interweave, and where the reader goes up and down different floors, entering and leaving the various levels of reality as they open, a history of the homeland, autobiography, testimony, chronicle, journalistic story, detective story, all of which, seen as a whole, is what a novel should best be according to Cervantes. The Suicide Museum is total and totalizing, an imaginative artifact to understand the occurrences of history and learn to read reality through fiction.” —Sergio Ramírez, author of Divine Punishment

“The Suicide Museum is a thrilling crossroads of genres, where history, chronicle, autofiction, memoir, thriller, and essay converge, and where a complex moral reflection and a call to political rebellion take the form of an investigation into one of the fundamental myths of the twentieth century: the death of Salvador Allende. Ariel Dorfman has written the book of his life.” —Javier Cercas, author of Soldiers of Salamis and The Impostor

“A hallucinatory novel that opens up multiple questions and whose central theme is ultimately the impossibility of language to access death.” —Raúl Zurita, Cervantes Prize–winner and author of Sky Below: Selected Works

“The Suicide Museum reminds us why we need fiction to understand the traumas of our Latin American history. Dorfman has written a daring and lucid novel, which makes for compulsive reading and has great formal wisdom.” —Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling and The Shape of the Ruins

“The author of Death and the Maiden has done it again: this novel transforms the dark memory of Chile into a meditation on history, guilt, and the traces left by horror. To read this is indispensable on the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet’s coup d’état.” —Santiago Roncagliolo, author of Red April

“What a formidable artifact…something like a cross between Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, and—last but not least and before anyone else and above all—Ariel Dorfman.” —Rodrigo Fresán, author of Kensington Gardens

“Highly recommended…An impressive mix of novel and essay…It will have many readers and deserves a warm reception.” —Benjamín Prado, author of Not Only Fire and Snow is SilentAriel Dorfman is a Chilean-American author, born in Argentina, whose award-winning books in many genres have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in more than one hundred countries. Among his works are the plays Death and the Maiden and Purgatorio, the novels Widows and Konfidenz, and the memoirs Heading South, Looking North and Feeding on Dreams. He writes regularly for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Guardian, El País, and CNN. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Threepenny Review, and Index on Censorship, among others. A prominent human rights activist, he worked as press and cultural advisor to Salvador Allende’s chief of staff in the final months before the 1973 military coup, and later spent many years in exile. He lives with his wife Angélica in Santiago, Chile, and Durham, North Carolina, where he is the Walter Hines Page Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University.1
 
Even before Joseph Hortha walked into the exorbitant breakfast room of the Hay-Adams hotel in Washington, DC, with his warm and devious smile, I should have suspected he spelled trouble.
My wife had warned me not to overly trust that enigmatic billionaire, that we had no idea what dark deeds he might have done to amass such a monstrous fortune, but I charged ahead, full blast anyway, let myself be enchanted by him, bewitched one might say, during that first encounter in 1983, so that when we met a second time seven years later and he proposed that I accompany him on what turned out to be a delirious adventure, I was unable to say no, sorry, I’m sorry, no, I already have far too much stress in my life as it is, thanks, but no. Or if I had been less financially distraught, maybe less obsessed myself with the mystery he wanted me to solve, the murder he wanted someone in Chile to investigate, or maybe if I had known sooner about The Suicide Museum and Hortha’s plans to save the planet, maybe this, maybe that, in a life made of far too many maybes—but none of that seems to matter now. Now that thirty years have passed, the thirty years I promised to remain silent and swore not to tell this story that is Hortha’s story and the story of his many secrets and, of course, my own story and what I was hiding, now that I am finally forcing myself to write the events that changed my life irremediably, the only thing that matters is where to begin, when it all began?
At times I trace the origin of my consent, why I accepted to assist Hortha in his mission, trace everything back to my own precarious existence, the day I survived death in Santiago during the coup of 1973, or the day a few months later when I went into exile. At other times I believe this has nothing to do with me, that if I had not been chosen by Hortha, this story of murder or of suicide would have been told anyway, needed to be told so badly that it would have found its way into the damaged world regardless of who was selected as the messenger, because it was set in motion many decades before both Hortha and I were born, this story was set in motion inexorably on that morning in 1908, when Salvador Allende’s mother gave birth to him, the child who was destined to become Chile’s president, perhaps already destined to die in the presidential palace in Santiago. But I am trapped again in maybe this and maybe that, and given so much uncertainty, perhaps it is best to simply start by explaining how my path first crossed Hortha’s in 1983.
I needed money and he had it, he had more than he knew what to spend it on. I had no idea what he looked like, did not even know if his real name was Ronald Karlson, but none of that carried any weight with me. It was enough that by the time we sat down together for the first time in Washington, he had already contributed to the cause of Chile and its resistance against General Augusto Pinochet’s military regime, sent checks to pay for safe houses and clandestine trade unions and student magazines purportedly about sports and gossip but in fact dedicated to organizing a youth movement. And he had also offered assistance for artists, my pet project, to subsidize writers and painters, musicians and actors so that, instead of leaving the country, as I had been obliged to, they could remain behind and bear witness to the struggle, the hope, the horror.
It was natural, therefore, that I should recur to him when, in April of 1983, I sought someone to finance a literary caper I was planning. In my defense, it should be noted that I did approach him reluctantly. Since leaving Chile I had become an expert in soliciting funds for others, but never for myself, no matter how dire and insecure our life had been, as our family wandered from country to country. And yet, I could, in all honesty, claim to Hortha that what I was bizarrely setting in motion would, besides benefiting me, impact public opinion and influential politicians, and so, convinced of the purity— or in any case the semipurity—of my intentions, I left a message with that philanthropist’s assistant, Pilar Santana.
I had always dealt with her in the past, rather than with her reclusive boss, but this time I told the answering machine that I would appreciate the opportunity of meeting with Mr. Karlson—as I then thought he was called—at his convenience, preferably in the Washington area, where we currently lived, though I could travel to Manhattan if necessary—not adding that I relished any chance to return to New York, where I’d spent my childhood and acquired the English language in which I now write these recollections. New York or Washington or anywhere else. I admit to not being overly optimistic: I knew that Ronald Karlson lived a hermit-like existence, one of those magnates who prefer to remain faceless, no photos or even uncredited quotes in the press, operating their business and their charities from the shadows.
So I didn’t expect a swift response, but on the next day . . . Pilar Santana spoke to me, as always, in Spanish. “Una clarificación,” she said. “Esta reunión, this meeting you seek, it’s for personal or for political reasons?” The wording of the question was brusque, intense, even puzzling—how had she guessed that this time I might require a handout for myself rather than for the cause?—but the frankness was mitigated by the warmth in her throat, something welcoming, almost purring, in the way she rounded the syllables with an accent straight from Madrid or Salamanca, and I recalled having liked that voice during the brief span of previous conversations, so I decided to consider her curiosity positively. It was encouraging that she had phoned back so promptly. And, anyway, I was the one asking for help, why shouldn’t she probe my motives?
“Both,” I answered. “Las dos razones. Personal and political. What I can guarantee is that Mr. Karlson will find it, at the very least, intriguing,” hoping that dangling this bait in front of him would do the trick.
He took the bait. Two days later, she informed me that Mr. Karlson would be spending the weekend in DC and was willing to meet for Sunday brunch at the Hay-Adams, at exactly twelve o’clock sharp. I remember even now that word, exactamente, how it reminded me of my status as a beggar, someone expected to observe the rules of punctuality and obsequiousness.
I was there with half an hour to spare and was shown to a privileged table with a spectacular view of the White House by an exceedingly elegant maître d’, certainly more elegantly decked out than anything I could muster, despite my wife having dressed me in the only attire that seemed both casual and stylish that she had plucked from my scant expatriate wardrobe, murmuring that, regardless of her apprehensions about what I was getting myself into, she wanted me to look my best. The table, set for two, was close enough to the tuxedoed piano player that I could distinctly hear the tinkle of “Some Enchanted Evening” but far enough to ensure that when I met this stranger across a crowded room, nothing would distract from our tête-à-tête, not even the many other conversations that were humming along in that liveried breakfast room, as ladies with ornate Sunday hats leaned forward to peer adoringly into the eyes of their overgroomed male companions, who feigned attention as they did their best to eavesdrop on what a couple of prominent senators at a neighboring table were discussing.
It may have been a mistake to have arrived so early. With every minute that passed, I became more aware of how totally out of place I was in this den of power, wealth, and tradition, a man without a country, without a job, without health care, scrounging a living from freelance articles and paltry translations and meager advances on books that sold poorly. And still trying to procure a green card for myself and the family. My nervousness increased—I realized I was clutching my briefcase to my chest as if it were a life preserver—by doubts about the project I was about to put forward, what this Karlson fellow might know about me that would prompt him to shelve my plea for assistance. He was the sort of man, I assumed, who would marshal tons of evidence, probably through the superefficient Pilar, before accepting to meet, ferret out that I was dependable and dedicated to the cause of freedom in my country and around the world, but also notorious for an admittedly zany streak.
Maybe she had found out that, back in 1975, accompanied by my skeptical wife, I had traveled to Sweden to ask its prime minister, Olof Palme—a contact made by García Márquez—if he would loan the Chilean Resistance a ship so all its exiled artists could sail to Valparaíso and raucously demand to be allowed back into the country. Had somebody told Pilar that Palme had replied, with calm Scandinavian bluntness, that he had never heard of a more dangerous and irresponsible scheme, risking the lives of the most vocal ambassadors of the Resistance for a gesture that would not remove the dictator from his lair? What if this Santana woman had discovered that, a few years after that fiasco, I had invited a left-wing Belgian industrialist to fund a campaign to get all decent Chileans, in and out of the country, to observe one minute of silence, all at the same instant, at precisely 13:50 Chilean time, which was when Allende had been assassinated while defending democracy? My idea was that if we all simultaneously imagined a land without Pinochet, the General would melt away under the common prayer of millions, a thesis that elicited the response that rather than my New Agey idea—like levitating the Pentagon—what was needed to defeat fascism was to buy weapons for an uprising against the military, bring down the Chilean “pentagon.” Not that Karlson had ever subscribed to that armed resistance thesis, supporting, as far as I knew, only forms of nonviolent mobilization, so maybe he’d agree with my proposal that if enough compatriots wished fiercely and synchronously, devotedly and peacefully, for the tyrant’s downfall, he would ipso facto disappear in a puff of rancid smoke.
Afraid that Karlson might indeed have uncovered my previous escapades, I assuaged my anxiety by examining from afar the brunch buffet and its plentiful treats. Not that I was going to serve myself any item before my host arrived, and, even then, do my best to restrain my inveterate gluttony. Angélica had reminded me a few hours ago, noting that I had skipped my morning oatmeal and fruit, that this meeting had not been arranged in order to more amply stuff myself at this tycoon’s expense, but to extract from him the dollars required for my next extravaganza.
Though what harm could come from snuffling around the buffet, maybe popping some select tidbit into my mouth? That faux pas was prevented when, as I strolled toward that feast of delicacies, I spied a slender woman positioned by the entrance to the dining room. She was calmly looking in my direction—and she moved her head imperceptibly to the side, once, twice, intimating that I return to my seat. It had to be Pilar Santana, verifying that all was well before her boss descended from his billionaire cloud.
If I did not immediately retreat to the relative safety of the table it was due to the magnetic force exercised by that olive-skinned woman. It was not any one trait, nothing that could be termed spectacular—on the contrary, there was no exceptional sparkle or flash in her hazel-brown eyes, no sensual enticement from the unrouged lips or the carelessly hanging black hair, the breasts and hips that did not call attention to themselves, everything almost commonplace if it had not been for an aura of command that she exhaled. Command of her body, command of her desires, command of her circumstances—here was somebody you would want on your side if danger loomed, she could sniff out that danger before it hit you, a woman you definitely wouldn’t want as an enemy. Not Karlson’s assistant, as I had assumed, but his lover, I realized, as I retraced my steps backward, drinking her in like a potion or an endless lake, and also his gatekeeper and guardian and, for reasons I had yet to fathom, a potential ally, perchance willing to be my accomplice in whatever scheme I cared to design.
Still facing her, I bumped up against the chair I had been occupying a few moments ago, awaiting the magnate who, if all went as it should, might intervene benevolently in my life. And suddenly, there he was, making his way toward me with a smile and an outstretched hand, firmly clasping the hand I offered back, gesturing with the other that we should sit and enjoy each other’s company, what an honor, not at all like I had imagined this intensely withdrawn individual. Trying to impress me with his kindness and courtesy, putting me instantly at ease.
“So good of you to have made time,” he said, waving—but not imperiously, with something akin to equanimity and consideration—toward a waiter who hovered nearby with a bottle of Moët & Chandon. I looked past the bottle and noticed that Pilar had settled at a small table near the piano, all by herself, absorbed in jotting down something in a notebook. I turned to my host as he added, “I mean, you had to leave your family on a Sunday, silly of me not to have included them in the invitation, not that I didn’t think of it. Next time I’ll get to meet María Angélica, your wife’s name is María, right?”
“She prefers Angélica,” I said, and then, seeing him puzzled, like a student who’d been caught with a mistake on his homework, I quickly added: “But, like so many women in Chile, she also carries the name of María. In fact, though she’s not religious, she celebrates her saint’s day, the day of the Marías, each September 12th; it’s more important to her than her birthday.”
“Well, she should be here, along with your two sons, Rodrigo and Joaquín, right? Your youngest, born in Amsterdam like me—but not this time, if there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that if we can avoid mixing our loved ones up in the messy affairs of politics or business, well . . . But, at any rate, my gratitude.”
“Oh no, I’m the one who’s thankful for this chance to—”
“Thank Allende,” he said, and his voice lowered to an almost-reverential whisper. “Salvador Allende,” he added, as if to make sure I understood he was talking about the dead Chilean president and not some other martyr or hero. “Chicho. He saved my life. Not once. Twice.”US

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