Dorfman's work often deals with the horrors of tyranny and, in later works, the trials of exile. In an interview in "BOMB Magazine", Dorfman said, "I'm constantly trying to figure out how you can be true to an experience which in fact very few people in the world would understand, such as having most of your friends disappear or be tortured, and at the same time finding a way of telling that story so other people in other places can read their own lives into that." His most famous play, "Death and the Maiden", describes the encounter of a former torture victim with the man she believed tortured her; it was made into a film in 1994 by Roman Polanski starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley. Dorfman identified "the stark, painful Chilean transition to democracy" as "Death and the Maiden"'s central theme. The play received a 20th anniversary revival in the 2011–2012 season at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End, directed by Jeremy Herrin and starring Thandie Newton, Tom Goodman-Hill, and Anthony Calf. The story was adapted in 2020 into a second English-language film, "The Secrets We Keep", directed by Yuval Adler, screenplay by Adler and Ryan Covington, and starring Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, and Chris Messina.