In 2022 they are fulfilled forty years of the publication of “The House of Spirits”the first novel of Isabel Allende. The round number of this anniversary, how could it be otherwise, was celebrated with the publication of a new book, “Purple”, presented a few days ago at a global press conference, which brought together 200 journalists. And it is that, when it comes to the Chilean writer, everyone puts aside the prejudices that her work could arouse, to sit down and talk with the woman who has managed to earn the respect of the press with the sincerity and sense of humor of her.
twenty five books after that first novel, Allende Today she is the most widely read author in Spanish in the world. best-seller assured in each of its releases and with devoted readers in all languages. Love’s stories, essay books and texts in which he gave the testimony of his own life, all are received with the same fervor by his public. What is the secret of his success? Here we try to figure it out.
Your destiny
Like the supernatural house she was able to imagine in the 1980s, Isabel Allende’s career and private life have been subject to unexpected events that twisted her original goals and transformed her into the famous author she is today.
The first of these events was the exile to which he had to submit after the death of Salvador Allende, his father’s cousin. The coup d’état that overthrew the president in 1973, forced her (like her entire family) to leave Chile to save her life. Until then, journalism was her main occupation. Isabel she wrote columns in the magazine “Paula” and conducted programs on television. But, her 13-year exile in Venezuela forced her to start from scratch and diversify her occupations. “What made me become a writer is that I couldn’t continue being a journalist. She was a journalist in Chile and was very happy – she told a few days ago in the presentation of “Violeta” -. In exile I lived in a kind of forced silence until, by chance, I ended up writing ‘The house of the spirits’. She gave me a voice as a writer, as a woman too. I don’t think that would have happened to me in Chile.”
The immediate sales success and the film adaptation of “The House of the Spirits” in 1993, with stars such as Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons in the leading roles, opened the difficult US market for Allende and transformed it into an international bestseller. .
His second book, “Of love and shadows”, was also made into a movie; when other very successful texts such as “Eva Luna” and “The Infinite Plan” had already seen the light.
In 1988 he settled permanently in California; she separated from her first husband, Miguel Frías, and married the American lawyer Willie Gordon. But in 1992, her life took a tragic turn when her daughter Paula de Ella died. The impact of that loss was narrated in one of her most moving books, “Paula”, from 1994.
“The island under the sea”, “Inés of my soul” and “The Japanese lover” are other of the many bestsellers that he wrote over 40 years, always located in an indeterminate country, with many elements of his family history and of his “imagined Chile”, as he defines his homeland after 5 decades of exile.
Shades
Twenty-five books translated into 42 languages and 75 million copies sold are the exorbitant numbers displayed by his publisher when he describes the phenomenon of Isabel Allende.
“Isabel represents our brand author, the best storyteller I know, our most widely read living writer in Spanish, the author who, from her first novel to her last, has published all of her work in our group,” explains her editor at Penguin Random House. , David Trías, from Spain-. Also a responsibility for me and her team because her novels are later published in dozens of countries around the world. I don’t know any writer who conveys as much passion for her work as Isabel. And that in the end the readers notice.
The immense figures are complemented by the dozens of awards and honors he has received in his country and in the world. From worldly accolades, such as appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show or the soap opera “Jane The Virgin” or in the front row of Dior’s latest pre-pandemic show; until obtaining the National Prize for Literature in Chile, becoming part of the board of directors of the Cervantes Institute, receiving an Honorary Doctorate from Harvard University or being named a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters of the United States, among many others. more distinctions.
The honors, however, were never enough (and that is Allende’s greatest pain) to rid his work of the bad consideration in which many intellectuals hold it. In this regard, even in the author’s entry on Wikipedia, the blunt opinion of another famous Chilean, Roberto Bolaño, when she was nominated for the National Prize for Literature in Chile, is always cited: “I don’t even think that Isabel Allende is a writer , is a writer,” said Bolaño. The debt that her first work owes to the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez is another of the recurring topics that her detractors always used to question the quality of her texts.
However, the press does not usually mistreat her. In part, because Allende is an excellent interlocutor, with a journalistic spirit that is always awake, attentive to the main interests of the world in each era. She responds to everything, there is no taboo subject for her in interviews and she is able to delight journalists and readers by telling intimacies of her sentimental life, such as her recent marriage to lawyer Roger Cukras.
Regarding the miniseries about his life that premiered last year, he said at the recent press conference, “I was very flattered. My husband and son felt there was too much exposure on the bad side of me. But they didn’t put anything in that series that I hadn’t written. I don’t keep any secrets. One is vulnerable because of the secrets one keeps. And I have never done anything so atrocious in my life.”
Precisely, the love for an Argentine musician who encouraged her to abandon her children in Venezuela and follow him to Madrid, is the “secret” revealed by the series that caused the family the most pain. A mistake that Allende herself took care of correcting a few months later, returning home and to the stability of a marriage that ended up collapsing years later.
Politics
Her support for left-wing candidates and movements and her fervent adherence to feminism are two of the data that add points to her image when judging her figure. In his recent press conference, he praised Gabriel Boric’s decision that the majority of his cabinet be occupied by women (one of them, Defense Minister, Maya Fernández; she is the granddaughter of Salvador Allende) and also that they were all young: ” It is a new generation rising to power. It’s time for the old buzzards to go home and play bingo.”
As for feminism, her penultimate book is called “Mujeres del alma mía” and in it she pays tribute to her mother, her daughter and all her heroines. Precisely for women, she dedicates the foundation that she presides over.
Isabel Allende meets all the requirements that a successful writer should follow: regularly launch a quality book (she always starts on January 8 and publishes a novel every two years), participate in public debates, be politically correct, attend with kindness to the press and understand where the mood of the world travels. The rest -charisma, talent for dialogue and an attractive personal history- is the plus that makes the most famous Chilean a character always rich and interesting.
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