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.
