"You don't know us," the writer said. "We're different here in Chile."

Ariel Dorfman's early novel Hard Rain was written in the last chaotic months before the Pinochet bloodbath ended Allende's elected government. The publication of this book to acclaim outside Chile enabled the author to escape into exile.

Here is all the drama and tension of those last months and days, vividly delivered through the eyes and experience of one of Latin America's greatest writers. The tragedy of fifty years ago now comes alive again, in George Shivers' expert English translation.

"That was Chile: all these individual wills, thoughts, journeys, betrayals, acts of generosity, acts of faith, obscenities, evasions;...you'd have to freeze time and bring every life to a halt so that no one would forget what had happened at that precise moment..." - from Hard Rain