Allende, Isabel

(1942– )

   Chilean novelist. Born in Lima, Peru, while her father was in the Chilean diplomatic service in that country. Upon the dissolution of her parents’ marriage, Allende was brought up by her mother and maternal relatives in Santiago, Chile. Her mother’s remarriage to another diplomat sent the young Allende to live in Bolivia and Lebanon during her childhood. She finished her secondary studies in Chile after 1958 and worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Santiago from 1959 to 1965, a work interrupted by an extended stay in Belgium and Switzerland. In 1966 Allende settled once again in Chile, where she soon began writing a humor column for the feminist magazine Paula and collaborating with several children’s publications in Santiago. In 1970 Salvador Allende Gossens—a first cousin of Allende’s father, Tomás—appointed her stepfather, Ramón Huidobro, ambassador to Argentina. From 1970 to 1975 Allende hosted an interview show on Chilean television as well as a humor program—both of which enjoyed great popularity—and wrote several works for the stage. This period of the author’s life came to an end in 1975—two years after the overthrow of Salvador Allende Gossens by a military coup—when she left Chile for Venezuela, where she would reside for 13 years. In Caracas, Allende contributed to the prestigious daily El Nacional and worked in several administrative jobs while she began the literary career that would bring her international renown. In 1988 she moved to San Rafael, California, where she still resides. In 1990, after the election of Patricio Aylwin Azócar as president of Chile, she returned to Chile for the first time.

   Allende is the author of nine works—novels, collections of short stories, and memoirs—all of which have been best sellers in several countries and have been translated into 27 languages. She is best known for La casa de los espíritus (1982, translated as House of the Spirits in 1985), a novel that had its beginnings in a letter from the author to her dying grandfather, who would serve as the model for the protagonist, Esteban Trueba. Through four generations of the women of the Trueba family, La casa de los espíritus recasts the history of 20th-century Chile—including the Allende Gossens presidency and the bloody aftermath of the military coup—into a personal narrative combining politics, magic, and the redeeming aspect of love. In 1993 Danish director Bille August filmed House of the Spirits with an international cast that included Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, but critics ambivalently received the movie. The second Allende work associated with the period of the “dirty wars” is De amor y de sombra (1984, translated as Of Love and Shadows in 1987). The novel is based on the actual assassination of five members of a Chilean family during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. Again, the theme of the redemptive power of love is examined in the text, as it narrates the story of two lovers, intent on exposing the massacre. Perhaps one of Latin America’s most recognizable authors, Allende has received innumerable awards and honors. She is a frequent, and popular, lecturer in Europe and the United States and has taught courses at the University of Virginia, Montclair College in New Jersey, and the University of California at Berkeley.