Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean-American writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is one of the first successful women writers in Latin America. She is largely famous for her contributions to Latin-American literature, novels such as The House of the Spirits (1982) and City of the Beasts (2002), which have been hugely successful. She has written novels based in part on her own experiences, often focusing on the experiences of women, weaving myth and realism together. She has lectured and done extensive book tours and has taught literature at ten US colleges. Having adopted American citizenship in 2003, she currently resides in California along with her husband. Her writings are comparable to those of Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Louise Erdrich and Laura Esquivel. Isabel Allende is of Basque, Spanish and Portuguese descent.
Franklin Library Isabel Allende book
Eva Luna - signed first edition - 1988
The Infinite Plan - signed first edition -1993
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Author Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende was born in Devello -Lima, Peru to diplomat Tomás Allende, the Chilean ambassador to Peru, and Francisca Llona Barros. Tomás Allende was the first cousin (with Isabel being his first cousin, once removed) of Salvador Allende, the President of Chile from 1970 to 1973. It is important to note that many sources also cite Isabel as Salvador Allende's niece, although most, if not all of these sources, do not state the relationship between Salvador and Tomás. The reason for this is that in Spanish, the words "tío" and "tía" refer equally to the siblings of one's parents as to the cousins of one's parents. So, in Spanish, Isabel Allende is, indeed, the niece of Salvador Allende, but in English, she is not his niece, but rather his first cousin once removed. The term "tío " or "tía", which means uncle or aunt, is also, in Chilean tradition, a sign of respect toward adults, whether it is a neighbor, a family friend, or simply an adult. Therefore, Isabel Allende was not Salvador Allende's direct niece. In 1945, after Tomás's "disappearance", Isabel's mother relocated with their three children to Chile, where they lived until 1953, moving briefly to Bolivia, then Lebanon. The family returned to Chile in 1958.Allende attended a number of private schools in Lebanon and Chile and was also briefly home-schooled. The young Isabel also read widely, particularly the works of William Shakespeare. In Chile she met her first husband Miguel Frías, whom she married in 1962. Reportedly, "Allende married early, into an Anglophile family and a kind of double life: at home she was the obedient wife and mother of two; in public she became, after a spell translating Barbara Cartland, a moderately well-known TV personality, a dramatist and a journalist on a feminist magazine."
From 1959 to 1965, Allende worked with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization in Santiago, then later in Brussels, Belgium, and elsewhere in Europe. For a brief while in Chile, she also had a job translating Romance novels from English to Spanish. However, she was fired for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue of the heroines to make them sound more intelligent as well as altering the Cinderella endings to let the heroines find more independence and do good in the world. Her daughter Paula was born in 1963. In 1966, Allende returned to Chile, and her son Nicolás was born there that year.
Reportedly, "the CIA-backed military coup in [September of] 1973 (that brought Augusto Pinochet to power) changed everything" for Allende because "her name meant she was caught up in finding safe passage for those on the wanted lists" (helping until her mother and stepfather, a diplomat in Argentina, narrowly escaped assassination). When she herself was added to the list and began receiving death threats, she fled to Venezuela, where she stayed for 13 years. In Venezuela she was a columnist for El Nacional, a main newspaper.
During a visit to California in 1988, Allende met her second husband, attorney Willie Gordon. In 1994 she was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit, the first woman to receive this honor. In 2003, Allende obtained United States citizenship.
In 2006, she was one of the eight flag bearers at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
In 2008, Allende received the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters from San Francisco State University for her "distinguished contributions as a literary artist and humanitarian."
In 2008, Allende received the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters from San Francisco State University for her "distinguished contributions as a literary artist and humanitarian."
Literary career
Beginning in 1967, Allende was on the editorial staff for Paula magazine, and from 1969 to 1974 for the children's magazine Mampato, where she later was the Editor. She published two children's stories, La Abuela Panchita (Grandmother Panchita) and Lauchas y Lauchones, as well as a collection of articles, Civilice a Su Troglodita. She also worked in Chilean television production for channels 7 (humorous programs) and 13 from 1970 to 1974. As a journalist, she once sought an interview with Pablo Neruda, a notable Chilean poet. Neruda declined, telling her she had too much imagination to be a journalist and should be a novelist instead. He also advised her to compile her satirical columns in book form. She did so, and this became her first published book. In 1973, Allende's play El Embajador played in Santiago, a few months before she was forced to flee the country due to the coup.In Allende's time in Venezuela, she was a freelance journalist for El Nacional in Caracas from 1976 to 1983 and an administrator of the Marrocco School in Caracas from 1979 to 1983.
In 1981, when Allende learned that her grandfather, aged 99, was on his deathbed, she started writing him a letter that later evolved into a book manuscript, The House of the Spirits (1982); the intent of this work was to exorcise the ghosts of the Pinochet dictatorship. The book was a great success; Allende was compared to Gabriel García Márquez as an author of the style known as magical realism.
Allende's books have since become known for their vivid storytelling. Although Allende is often lumped together with the literary style of magical realism, her works often display elements of post-Boom literature, and as such her style cannot be described as purely adhering to magical realism. Isabel also holds to a very methodical, some would say menacing, literary routine. She writes using a computer, working Monday through Saturday, 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. "I always start on January 8," Allende stated; "a tradition she began in 1981 with a letter she wrote to her dying grandfather that would become the groundwork for her first novel, The House of the Spirits." Allende is also quoted as saying:
“In January 8, 1981, I was living in Venezuela and I received a phone call that my beloved grandfather was dying. I began a letter for him that later became my first novel, The House of the Spirits. It was such a lucky book from the very beginning, that I kept that lucky date to start.”
Allende's book Paula (1995) is a memoir of her childhood in Santiago, and her years in exile. It was written in the form of a letter to her daughter Paula, who lay in a coma in a hospital in Spain. Paula had porphyria, and during a crisis she actually fell into a coma then vegetative state due to a medication error while the hospital she was in was on strike. She was severely brain damaged, and her mother took her to California, where she died a year later in 1992.
Reportedly, "Allende's impact on not only Latin American literature but also on world literature cannot be overestimated." The Los Angeles Times has called Isabel Allende "a genius," and she has received many international awards, including the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, granted to writers "who have contributed to the beauty of the world." She is also the founder of the Isabel Allende Foundation, which is "dedicated to supporting programs that promote and preserve the fundamental rights of women and children to be empowered and protected." She has recently been called a "literary legend" by Latino Leaders magazine, which named Allende as the third most influential Latino leader in the world in their 2007 article. Allende's novels have been translated into 30 languages and sold 10s of millions of copies.
Isabel Allende books in order
The House of the Spirits (1982)The Porcelain Fat Lady (1984)
Of Love and Shadows (1985)
Eva Luna (1987)
Two Words (1989)
The Stories of Eva Luna (1989)
The Infinite Plan (1991)
Daughter of Fortune (1999)
Portrait in Sepia (2000)
City of the Beasts (2002)
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (2004)
Zorro (2005)
Forest of the Pygmies (2005)
Ines of My Soul (2006)
Island Beneath the Sea (2010)
Maya's Notebook (2011)
Ripper (2014)
The Japanese Lover (2015)
In the Midst of Winter (2017)
A Long Petal of the Sea (2019)
Violeta (2022)
The Wind Knows My Name (2023)
My Name Is Emilia del Valle (2025)
Nonfiction
Paula (1994)Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1998)
My Invented Country: A Memoir (2003)
The Sum of Our Days (2008)
The Soul of a Woman (2021)
Isabel Allende quotes
"Write what should not be forgotten."
"We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test."
"You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found."
"I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed, and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet."
"You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not."
"The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night."
Source and additional information: Isabel Allende