Discover the Best Books Written by Isabel Allende

Isabel Angélica Allende Llona is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the genre magical realism, is known for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de Los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La Ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. In addition, President Barack Obama awarded her the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and historical events and pay homage to women's lives while weaving together elements of myth and realism. In addition, she has lectured and toured many U.S. colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English, Allende was granted United States citizenship in 1993, having lived in California since 1989, first with her American husband (from whom she is now divorced).

Beginning in 1967, Allende was on the editorial staff of Paula magazine and the children's magazine Mampato [es] from 1969 to 1974, where she later became the editor. She published two children's stories, "La Abuela Panchita" and "Lauchas y Lauchones," a collection of articles, Civilice a Su Troglodita. She also worked in Chilean television production for channels 7 and 13 from 1970 to 1974. 

As a journalist, she once sought an interview with poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda agreed to the interview, and he told her that 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. During her time in Venezuela, Allende 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, while in Caracas, Allende received a phone call informing her that her 99-year-old grandfather was near death, and she sat down to write him a letter, hoping to "keep him alive, at least in spirit." The letter evolved into a book, The House of the Spirits (1982); this work intended to exorcise the ghosts of the Pinochet dictatorship. The book was rejected by numerous Latin American publishers but eventually published in Buenos Aires. The reader soon ran to more than two dozen editions in Spanish and was translated into a score of languages. As a result, Allende was compared to Gabriel García Márquez as an author in style known as magical realism.

Although Allende is often cited as a practitioner of magical realism, her works also display elements of post-Boom literature. Allende also holds to a rigorous writing routine. She writes on a computer, working Monday to Saturday, 09:00 to 19:00. "I always start on 8 January", Allende stated, "a tradition she began in 1981 with the letter she wrote to her dying grandfather that would become The House of the Spirits."

Allende's book Paula (1995) is a memoir of her childhood in Santiago and her years in exile. It is written as an anguished letter to her daughter. In 1991 an error in Paula's medication resulted in severe brain damage, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state. Allende spent months at Paula's bedside before learning that a hospital mishap had caused the brain damage. Allende had Paula moved to a hospital in California, where she died on 6 December 1992.

Allende's novels have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold about 74 million copies. Her 2008 book, The Sum of Our Days, is a memoir. It focuses on her life with her family, which includes her grown son, Nicolás; second husband, William Gordon; and several grandchildren. A novel in New Orleans, Island Beneath the Sea, was published in 2010. In 2011 came El Cuadernos de Maya (Maya's Notebook), in which the setting alternates between Berkeley, California, and Chiloé in Chile, as well as Las Vegas, Nevada.