[In the following review of The Nanny and the Iceberg, Mujica maintains that Dorfman presents“ample food for thought in a rich, complex, and sometimes hilarious text.”]

In his convoluted but highly entertaining new novel [The Nanny and the Iceberg], Ariel Dorfman returns to his favorite subject—not sex, as the suggestive cover and bildungsroman format might lead you to believe, but the author's native Chile. Composed as a long suicide note from a young Chilean, Gabriel McKenzie, to an American friend, the novel explores the tensions between post-Pinochet Chile and the ideals of the past, Gabriel writes from Seville, where he is planning to celebrate his father's birthday by blowing up a giant iceberg being displayed by the Chilean government at the World's Fair, and himself, his father, and his father's best friend along with it.

Gabriel is conceived in October 1967, just as Ché Guevara is being buried. The next day Cristóbal McKenzie and his best friend, Pablo Baron, both born on the same day, make an outrageous bet. With Cris's brother Pancho as the only witness, Cris wagers that he will make love with a woman every night until his fiftieth birthday in 1992, never sleeping with the same woman twice except his wife, Milagros, while Pablo bets that by then, he will be the most powerful man in Chile. When Pinochet comes to power, Milagros and her son, Gabriel, go into exile in New York. Cris stays in Santiago operating a detective service that retrieves runaway boys. Pablo and Pancho work for the overthrow of Pinochet.

Raised with stories of Cris's extraordinary sexual prowess, Gabriel grows up feeling inadequate. He believes he will be unable to divest himself of his virginity until he confronts his father, but Milagros refuses to return to Santiago until democracy has been reestablished. A sixties leftist, she has tried to instill her values in her son, but Gabriel is more interested in sex than the fatherland. In 1991, he is twenty-three years old, and Chile has an elected president. Now they can return home.

Both Cris and Pablo are close to complying with the terms of their wager. Cris's exploits have made him a sexual legend, while Pablo is an important minister in the Aylwin government—a position he achieved by declining to prosecute Pinochet's officials. Uncle Pancho, who refused to compromise his ideals, languishes in jail. At the moment, Pablo's primary concern is securing and transporting the iceberg, a feat that will establish Chile as an innovative, technologically advanced country. However, someone is threatening to blow it up. Periodically, Pablo receives threats from a Commander You-Know-Who, and puts Cris on the case. Cris has been distant toward Gabriel, but the mission brings the two closer.

Before long, Gabriel has several leads, including Cris himself (who may want to bring Pablo down and make him lose the bet), Pablo (who may want to incapacitate Cris and make him lose the bet), Pablo's beautiful daughter Amanda Camila, and, bizarrely, the nanny—the Indian woman who has been nursemaid to Milagros, then Amanda Camila, and then Gabriel. As it turns out, one of Pablo's ancestors had massacred Indians while building up his meat-exporting business in Patagonia, and, according to Gabriel, the nanny may be seeking revenge. Or, she may be covering up for someone else.

Eventually, Cris becomes the nurturing, supportive dad the young man has always craved. He gives Gabriel tips on how to seduce women, and soon Gabriel feels ready to put the lessons to use. The problem is, the one girl he wants is the one girl he is forbidden to touch: Amanda Camila. For years, Gabriel agonized that whatever woman he was with, his father had been there before, and that fear blocked his ability to make love. However, Gabriel knows that Cris has never been with Amanda Camila because when she was born, Cris promised Pablo that he would never seduce her. Upon his arrival in Chile, Pablo made Gabriel promise the same thing. But the certainty that Amanda Camila has never been with his father makes her irresistible. Soon the young couple has an affair, and Amanda Camila is expecting a baby.

The pregnancy is catastrophic. Pablo reveals that he had once had an affair with Milagros and that Gabriel is really his son, so that Amanda Camila and he are siblings. Then Uncle Pancho alleges that Cris, not Pablo, is really Amanda Camila's father. The only person who knows the truth is the nanny, who has since died. In a terrible state of confusion, Gabriel leaves with the whole group for Seville, where the iceberg will be exhibited. Cris and Pablo are planning a birthday celebration, and Gabriel has offered to prepare a cazuela according to the nanny's secret recipe. Then he will destroy the iceberg, himself, and the two men, one of which is his father. Or will he?

Dorfman is playing here with myths and images. The constant references to the Don Juan plays and to Mozart's Don Giovanni serve to focus on sexual issues, including father-son relationships, in cultures that glorify machismo. The legendary Ché, whose picture adorns Milagros's apartment in New York, incarnates the ideals of the sixties.

Throughout, conflicting views of Chile collide and realign like images in a kaleidoscope. Both the iceberg and the nanny are symbols of the country. Yes, progress has been made, but, Dorfman suggests, Chile still has a long way to go. Gabriel's search for his father is a search for his Chilean identity, and that identity has not been defined.

The nanny recalls Chile's autochthonous heritage—Indian wisdom, traditional dishes, century-old traditions. But the nanny disappears. At the end, Gabriel hears her voice, along with Ché Guevara's, from beyond the grave—but can she save him or is it only a delusion?

Brilliantly conceived and crafted, The Nanny and the Iceberg asks more questions than it answers—deliberately. Dorfman does not offer solutions. What he does is supply ample food for thought in a rich, complex, and sometimes hilarious text.