Isabel Allende (Chile, 1942)
Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer and journalist. Allende was born in Lima (Peru), goddaughter of Salvador Allende, the first socialist president of Chile. She spent her childhood living in Chile with her grandfather, and then she lived in several different countries after her mother remarried to a diplomat. Allende's life drastically changed after the military coup in 1973 by Pinochet; she and her family were at risk and fled the country. Allende lived in exile in Venezuela for 13 years and then she moved to California, where she has lived since 1987.
Her first bestseller, The house of Spirits (1982), started as a long letter to her dying grandfather. Allende's books are known for their vivid storytelling and she is one of the most well-known practitioners of magical realism. Her novels are often based upon her personal experience and historical events, and pay homage to the lives of women.
“This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice.”
The House of the Spirits
The House of the Spirits
On the day that the priest accused her of being possessed by the devil and that her uncle Marcos's body was delivered to her house accompanied by a puppy, Barrabás, Clara del Valle began keeping a journal. Fifty years later, her husband Esteban and her granddaughter Alba refer to these journals as they piece together the story of their family...
Eva Luna
Eva Luna has a gift for storytelling. Born to a servant woman who understood the beauty of a good story, Eva learned at an early age how to use her words to construct a narrative. When her mother dies, Eva falls under the care of her insane godmother. Eva gets passed around from employer to employer. After a political uprising, Eva is rescued by...
Paula
Isabel Allende wrote Paula -a memoir- while tending to her daughter, Paula Frías Allende, who was in a coma arising from complications of porphyria. Allende started the book as a letter to Paula, explaining what she was missing so she would not be confused when she recovered. The novel includes accounts both of Paula's treatment and of Allende's life, sometimes overlapping with the content of Allende's first novel...
Inés of my Soul
Born into a poor family in Spain, Inés, a seamstress, finds herself condemned to a life of hard work without reward or hope for the future. It is the sixteenth century, the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and when her shiftless husband disappears to the New World, Inés uses the opportunity to search for him as an excuse to flee her stifling homeland and seek adventure...