ISABEL ALLENDE (b. 1942) is a Chilean writer and one of the mostly widely read and translated Spanish-language authors in the world. Her novels are often based upon her personal experience and historical events and pay homage to the lives of women who contest patriarchal limitations, while weaving together elements of myth and realism.
Allende worked as a journalist in Chile until she was forced to flee to Venezuela after Chilean President Salvador Allende, her father's cousin, was overthrown and murdered in a coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. In 1981 she began writing a letter to her terminally ill grandfather that evolved into her first novel, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS (1982), intended to exorcise the ghosts of the Pinochet dictatorship. The book was rejected by numerous Latin American publishers, but eventually published in Buenos Aires. It ran to more than two dozen editions in Spanish and was translated into a score of languages, with Allende's writing earning comparisons to the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez.
This was followed by the novels OF LOVE AND SHADOWS (1984), EVA LUNA (1987), and THE INFINITE PLAN (1991) and the collection THE STORIES OF EVA LUNA (1990). DAUGHTER OF FORTUNE (1999) is a novel about a Chilean woman who leaves her country for the California gold rush of 1848-49, and PORTRAIT IN SEPIA (2000) about a woman tracing the roots of her past. ZORRO (2005) is a retelling of the well-known legend, and INÉS OF MY SOUL (2006) tells the fictionalized story of Inés Suárez, the mistress of conquistador Pedro de Valdivia. THE ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA (2009) uses the 1791 slave revolt in Haiti as a backdrop for a story about a mulatto slave who is forced to become her owner's lover after his wife goes mad. MAYA'S NOTEBOOK (2011) takes the form of a teenage girl's diary, written in the wake of a disastrous episode of drug use and prostitution. In RIPPER (2014), Allende tells the story of a teenage girl tracking a serial killer.
Her later novels include THE JAPANESE LOVER (2015), which traces a decades-long love affair between a Polish immigrant and a Japanese American man, and IN THE MIDST OF WINTER (2017), about the friendships that form after a car accident in Brooklyn, NY, during a blizzard. In A LONG PETAL OF THE SEA (2019), a man and a woman become exiles following the Spanish Civil War and flee to Chile aboard a refugee ship chartered by poet Pablo Neruda. VIOLETA (2022), centres on a 100-year-old South American woman who looks back on her eventful life. Her most recent novel, THE WIND KNOWS MY NAME (2023), weaves together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019.
Allende's first nonfiction work, PAULA (1994), is a memoir of her childhood in Santiago and the years she spent in exile, and is written as an anguished letter to her late daughter. A more lighthearted book, APHRODITE: A MEMOIR OF THE SENSES (1997), shared her personal knowledge of aphrodisiacs and includes family recipes. MY INVENTED COUNTRY (2003) recounts her self-imposed exile after the 1973 revolution in Chile and her feelings about her adopted country, the United States. Her later memoirs include THE SUM OF OUR DAYS (2007), about her extended family, and THE SOUL OF A WOMAN (2021), in which she discusses her development as a feminist.
In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010 received the Premio Nacional de Literatura, Chile's National Prize in Literature. She has also been awarded the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the PEN Center USA's lifetime achievement award in 2016.
The following books are in ePub format unless otherwise indicated:
== FICTION ==
* A Long Petal of the Sea (Ballantine, 2020) * City of the Beasts (HarperCollins, 2021) * Daughter of Fortune (HarperVia, 2020) * Eva Luna (Atria, 2015) * Forest of the Pygmies (HarperCollins, 2021) * House of the Spirits (Bantam, 1986) – PDF (by @pharmakate) * House of the Spirits (Washington Square, 2015) * In the Midst of Winter (Atria, 2017) * Ines of My Soul (HarperCollins, 2006) * The Infinite Plan (HarperCollins, 2014) * Island Beneath the Sea (HarperCollins, 2010) * The Japanese Lover (Atria, 2015) * Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (HarperCollins, 2021) * Maya's Notebook (HarperCollins, 2020) – ePub + PDF * Of Love and Shadows (Washington Square, 2015) * Portrait in Sepia (HarperCollins, 2010) * Ripper (HarperVia, 2020) * Stories of Eva Luna (Washington Square, 2015) * Violeta (Ballantine, 2023) * Violeta (Bloomsbury, 2022) – PDF * The Wind Knows My Name (Ballantine, 2023) * Zorro (HarperCollins, 2005) – PDF
== NON-FICTION ==
* Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (HarperCollins, 2021) * My Invented Country: A Memoir (HarperCollins, 2020) * Paula: A Memoir (HarperVia, 2020) * The Soul of a Woman (Ballantine, 2021) – ePub + PDF * The Sum of Our Days (HarperCollins, 2020)
== INTERVIEWS ==
* Conversations with Isabel Allende [ed. Rodden] (Texas, 1999) – PDF
