The Book of SANA’A (A City In Short Fiction)
Isabel Allende’s South America-set Books
28th April 2024
Noted author and journalist Isabel Allende is considered the first internationally successful female South American author. Her books have been translated into 30 languages and sold more than 51 million copies, extending her influence around the world. She was born in Peru, but has lived part of her life in Chile and Venezuela – countries that feature extensively as settings for her work. He best known titles include The House of Spirits and Eva Luna. Here are ten of her South America-set books.
Daughter of Fortune – CHILE
A magnificent sweeping tale from the international bestselling author of ‘The House of the Spirits’.
Set in Anglophile Chile and goldrush California during the middle years of the nineteenth century, this magnificent romance tells the story of English foundling Eliza Sommers who grows up in the bustling entrepot of Valparaiso. Eliza is a spirited, sparky and ambitious romantic who becomes embroiled in a forbidden love affair with the charismatic but capricious Joaquin Andieta. When he disappears suddenly for California, and the promise of riches that rumours of gold strikes have brought him, she can but follow after him…
City of the Beasts – AMAZON RAIN FOREST
Fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold has the chance to take the trip of a lifetime.
With his mother in hospital, too ill to look after him, Alex is sent out to his grandmother Kate – a fearless reporter with blue eyes ‘as sharp as daggers’ points’. Kate is about to embark on an expedition to the dangerous, remote world of the Amazon rainforest, but rather than change her plans, she simply takes Alex along with her. They set off with their team – including a local guide and his daughter Nadia, with her wild, curly hair and skin the colour of honey – in search of a fabled headhunting tribe and a legendary, marauding creature known to locals as the ‘Beast’, only to find out much, much more about the mysteries of the jungle and its inhabitants.
In a novel rich in adventure, magic and spirit, internationally celebrated novelist Isabel Allende takes readers of all ages on a voyage of discovery and wonder, deep into the heart of the Amazon.
The House of the Spirits – CHILE
Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende’s magnificent family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature, and of history, converge in an unforgettable, wholly absorbing and brilliantly realised novel that is as richly entertaining as it is a masterpiece of modern literature.
Of Love and Shadows – CHILE
Irene Beltrán is a force to be reckoned with. As a magazine journalist – an unusual profession for a woman with her privileged upbringing – she is constantly challenging the oppressive regime. Her investigative partner is photographer Francisco Leal, the son of impoverished Spanish Marxist émigrés.
They are an inseparable team, and – despite Irene’s engagement to an army captain – form a passionate connection. When an assignment leads them to uncover an unspeakable crime, they are determined to reveal the truth in a nation overrun by terror and violence. Together they will risk everything for justice – and ultimately to embrace the passion that binds them.
Eva Luna – VENEZUELA
Though her 1987 novel Eva Luna is set in an unnamed Latin American country, Allende says it was inspired by her time living in Venezuela, and her friendship with a young artist named Elsa Morales
‘My name is Eva, which means “life”, according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.’
Isabel Allende tells the sweet and sinister story of an orphan who beguiles the world with her astonishing visions, triumphing over the worst of adversity and bringing light to a dark place.
Maya’s Notebook – CHILE / UNITED STATES
Abandoned by her parents as a baby, Maya has been brought up by her tough grandmother Nini and her gentle grandfather Popo. But at school, the teenage Maya finds herself drawn towards the wrong crowd. Before she knows what’s happened, Maya’s life has turned into one of drug addiction and crime.
Things go from bad to worse as Maya disappears into the criminal underworld. To save her from her old associates, Nini sends Maya to a remote island off the coast of Chile.
Safe amongst her new neighbours, Maya feels compelled to write her story and slowly she begins to heal. But can she learn to live with her scars, and will her past ever catch up with her?
A Long Petal of the Sea – CHILE / SPAIN
September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles’ splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe.
Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life – and the fate of his country – forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile.
When opportunity to seek refuge arises, they board a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to Chile, the promised ‘long petal of sea and wine and snow’. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world.
A masterful work of historical fiction that soars from the Spanish Civil War to the rise and fall of Pinochet, A Long Petal of the Sea is Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.
Violeta – SOUTH AMERICA
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first daughter in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.
Through her father’s prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling.
In a letter to someone she loves above all others, Violeta recounts devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy, and a life shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humour will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.
My Invented Country – CHILE
The life story of Isabel Allende – one of the world’s favourite writers – is as exotic, passionate and inspiring as one of her novels.
Just three when her parents divorced, Isabel Allende was raised in her grandparents’ home in Chile. She left school at 16; and married Miguel Frías at 19. She then juggled her work as a journalist, editor, advice columnist and television interviewer with looking after her two children.
But when her cousin the Chilean president Salvador Allende was assassinated in 1973 in Pinochet’s right-wing military coup, her life changed profoundly. It was too dangerous to stay in Chile; and she, her husband, and their two children fled to Venezuela. During her impoverished exile, she started writing ‘The House of the Spirits’. Based on her memories of her family and the political upheaval in her native country, it became an international bestseller and everything changed again…
Portrait in Sepia – CHILE
Best selling international author, Isabel Allende tackles her homeland head-on in this staggering, epic romance.
‘Portrait in Sepia’ is both a magnificent historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century in Chile and a marvellous family saga peopled by characters from ‘Daughter of Fortune’ and ‘The House of the Spirits’, two of Allende’s most celebrated novels.
As a young girl, Aurora del Valle suffered a brutal trauma that has shaped her character and erased from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by terrible nightmares.
When she finds herself alone at the end of an unhappy love affair, she decides to explore the mystery of her past, to discover what it was, exactly, all those years ago, that had such a devastating effect on her young life.
Richly detailed, epic in scope, this engrossing story of the dark power of hidden secrets is intimate in its probing of human character, and thrilling in the way it illuminates the complexity of family ties.
Enjoy Isabel Allende’s South American-set Books!
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