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| Isabel Allende |
| Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru (1942). Her father was a Chilean diplomat, so the family moved around and she grew up in Chile, Bolivia, Europe, and the Middle East. Her uncle was Salvador Allende, the Chilean president. He was a radical socialist and his reforms led to military uprising in 1973. He was killed. She fled to Venezuela and left behind her beloved grandfather, on his deathbed. On January 8, 1981, she began a long letter to her grandfather, and that letter became her first novel, The House of the Spirits (1982). It is the story of four generations of a Chilean family and has been translated into over thirty languages. She said, "In that book I intended to save the past, to gather again the loved ones, to bring the dead back to life. I wanted to recover all that I had lost, my land, my family, the objects that had been with me during all my life, my memories, and the memories of those who were no longer with me." Allende's seventh book, Paula, also began as a letter which she wrote in 1991 to her daughter who had become very ill and had fallen into a coma from which she would never awake. Part One begins, "Listen, Paula, I am going to tell you a story, so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost." It is the story of Isabel's life and the life of the family her daughter was leaving. It was published in 1994 to huge literary acclaim, two years ago.fte For more visit her website: http://www.isabelallende.com/Paula's death. |