Ariel Dorfman

Vladimir Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean-American writer, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights advocate.

He has been a U.S. citizen since 2004. Since 1985, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

He was born in Buenos Aires on May 6, 1942, into the family of Adolfo Dorfman, an Odessan from a wealthy Jewish family who became a prominent Argentine professor of economics and author of works including The History of Industry in Argentina. His mother, Fanny Zelikovich Dorfman, born in Chișinău, was of Bessarabian Jewish origin. Soon after his birth, they moved to the United States and then, in 1954, to Chile.

Vladimir studied and later worked as a professor at the University of Chile. In 1966, he married Angelica Malinarich and became a Chilean citizen. From 1968 to 1969, he studied in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, and then returned to Chile. After the restoration of democracy in Chile in 1990, he and his wife Angelica divided their time between Santiago and the United States.