Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, and human rights activist.

From 1970 to 1973, Dorfman was part of the administration of president Salvador Allende. He was forced into exile following the bloody military coup of 1973 in which General Augusto Pinochet came to power.

Since 1985 he has taught at Duke University. Since the restoration (1990) of democracy in Chile, he divides his time between Santiago and the United States. Dorfman has written fiction often dealing with the horrors of tyranny and, in later works, the trials of exile including his most famous play, Death and the Maiden.

Dorfman, a critic of Pinochet, has written extensively about his extradition case for the Spanish newspaper El País and other publications.

Ariel Dorfman is the Walter Hines Page Research Professor of Literature and Professor of Latin American Studies at Duke University.