"Listen, Paula. I am going to tell you a story so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost." So says Chilean writer Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits) in the opening lines of the luminous, heart-rending memoir she wrote while her 28-year-old daughter Paula lay in a coma. In its pages, she ushers an …
In nineteenth-century Chile, Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that erases all recollections of the first five years of her life. Raised by her regal and ambitious grandmother Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a privileged environment but is tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize …
The Stories of Eva Luna is a collection of Spanish-language short stories by the Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende. It consists of stories told by the title character of Allende's earlier novel Eva Luna. The literary critic Barbara Mujica wrote: "The Chilean author presents her stories through the age-old device …
Zorro is a 2005 novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende. Its subject is the pulp hero Diego de la Vega, better known as El Zorro, who was featured in an early 20th-century novel. The novel takes the form of a biography and is the first origin story for this legendary character. In terms of material, it is a prequel to …