Isabel Allende Popular Books
Isabel Allende Biography & Facts
Isabel Angélica Allende Llona (Latin American Spanish: [isaˈβel aˈʝende] ; born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean-American 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. 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 the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured U.S. colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English, Allende was granted United States citizenship in 1993, having lived in California since 1989. Personal life Allende was born in Lima, Peru, the daughter of Francisca Llona Barros called "Doña Panchita" (the daughter of Agustín Llona Cuevas and Isabel Barros Moreira, of Portuguese descent) and Tomás Allende, who was at the time a second secretary at the Chilean embassy. Her father Tomás was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973. In 1945, after Tomás left them, Isabel's mother relocated with her three children to Santiago, Chile, where they lived until 1953. In 1953 Allende's mother married Ramón Huidobro and the family moved often. Huidobro was a diplomat appointed to Bolivia and Beirut. In La Paz, Bolivia, Allende attended an American private school; and in Beirut, Lebanon, she attended an English private school. The family returned to Chile in 1958, where Allende was also briefly home-schooled. In her youth, she read widely, particularly the works of William Shakespeare. In 1970, Salvador Allende appointed Huidobro as ambassador to Argentina. While living in Chile, Allende finished her secondary studies and met engineering student Miguel Frías whom she married in 1962. They had two children, a son and a daughter. Reportedly, "Allende married early, into an Anglophile family and a kind of double life: at home she was the obedient wife and mother of two; in public she became, after a spell translating Barbara Cartland, a moderately well-known TV personality, a dramatist and a journalist on a feminist magazine." From 1959 to 1965, Allende worked with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Santiago, then in Brussels, and elsewhere in Europe. For a short time in Chile, she also had a job translating romance novels from English to Spanish. However, she was fired for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue of the heroines to make them sound more intelligent, as well as altering the Cinderella ending to allow the heroines to find more independence and do good in the world. Allende's and Frías's daughter Paula was born in 1963; she died in 1992. In 1966, Allende again returned to Chile, where her son Nicolás was born that year. Exile in Venezuela In 1973, Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Isabel found herself arranging safe passage for people on the "wanted lists", which she continued to do until her mother and stepfather narrowly escaped assassination. When she herself was added to the list and began receiving death threats, she fled to Venezuela, where she stayed for 13 years. It was during this time that Allende wrote her debut novel The House of the Spirits (1982). Allende has stated that her move from Chile made her a serious writer: "I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be." Allende believed that, being female in a patriarchal family, she was not expected to be a "liberated" person. Her history of oppression and liberation is thematically found in much of her fiction, where women contest the ideals of patriarchal leaders. In Venezuela she was a columnist for El Nacional, a major national newspaper. In 1978, she began a temporary separation from Miguel Frías. She lived in Spain for two months, then returned to her marriage. Later life She divorced her first husband, Miguel Frías, in 1987. During a visit to California on a book tour in 1988, Allende met her second husband, California attorney and novelist William C. "Willie" Gordon. They married in July 1988. In 1994, she was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit, the first woman to receive this honor. Allende resides in San Rafael, California. Most of her family lives nearby, with her son, his second wife, and her grandchildren just down the hill, in the house she and her second husband vacated. She separated from Gordon in April 2015. In 2006, she was one of the eight flag bearers at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. She presented the talk Tales of Passion at TED 2007. In 2008, Allende received the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters from San Francisco State University for her "distinguished contributions as a literary artist and humanitarian." In 2014, Allende received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Harvard University for her contributions to literature. In 2019 she married Roger Cukras, a lawyer from New York. Although not as openly political as some of her contemporary writers, she expressed contempt for Donald Trump and his policies following his election in 2016, and she later endorsed Democrat Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election. She has also regularly defended the record of her father's cousin, Salvador Allende. Foundation Allende started the Isabel Allende Foundation on 9 December 1996, in honor of her daughter, Paula Frías Allende, who fell into a coma after complications of the disease porphyria led to her hospitalization. Paula was 29 years old when she died in 1992. The foundation is "dedicated to supporting programs that promote and preserve the fundamental rights of women and children to be empowered and protected." Career Beginning in 1967, Allende was on the editorial staff of Paula magazine and the children's magazine Mampato from 1969 to 1974, where she later became the editor. She published two children's stories, "La Abuela Panchita" and "Lauchas y Lauchones", as well as 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.: W4 She did so, and this became her first published book. In 1973, Allende's play El Embajador played in Santiago a few mon.... Discover the Isabel Allende popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Isabel Allende books.
Best Seller Isabel Allende Books of 2024
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Wildflower Hill
Kimberley FreemanHailed by bestselling author Kate Morton as “a gorgeous story of family and secrets and the redemptive power of love,” Wildflower Hill is s compelling and romantic novel spanning t...
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In the Midst of Winter
Isabel AllendeNew York Times and worldwide bestselling author Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel that journeys from presentday Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile a...
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The Valley of Light
Terry KayA lyrical and poignant gift from one of America's great storytellers.On a sunny summer day in 1948, Noah Locke arrives in Bowerstown, a small North Carolina community bordered by l...
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Retrato en sepia
Isabel AllendeNarrada en la voz de una joven mujer, ésta es una magnífica novela histórica, y una portentosa saga familiar en la que reencontramos algunos personajes de Hija de la fortuna y de L...
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Violeta
Isabel AllendeLa épica y emocionante historia de una mujer cuya vida abarca los momentos históricos más relevantes del siglo XX.Desde 1920 con la llamada «gripe española» hasta la pandemia de 20...
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Eva Luna
Isabel Allende“A remarkable novel” (The Washington Post) from New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende’s introducing her most enchanting creation, Eva Luna: a lover, a writer, a revoluti...
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Short Stories in Spanish
John KingThis is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original Spanish and in English translation. Including storie...
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El plan infinito
Isabel AllendeHistoria de grandiosa concepción, El plan infinito recrea medio siglo de la sociedad norteamericana en la vida de su protagonista.Ésta es la historia de Gregory Reeves, un gringo q...
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A Long Petal of the Sea
Isabel Allende, Nick Caistor & Amanda HopkinsonNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of The House of the Spirits, this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the afte...
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This I Believe
Jay Allison & Dan GedimanAn inspiring collection of the personal philosophies of a group of remarkable men and womenBased on the National Public Radio series of the same name, This I Believe features eight...
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Forest of the Pygmies
Isabel AllendeOnce again Alexander Cold and his indomitable journalist grandmother, Kate, are braving the mystical unknown, this time in the heart of Africa. Along with Alex's friend Nadia Santo...
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The Cemetery of Untold Stories
Julia AlvarezLiterary icon Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies shares an inventive and emotional novel about storytelling and her homeland of the ...
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The Orange Girl
Jostein GaarderFrom the author of SOPHIE'S WORLD, a modern fairy tale with a philosophical twist.'It should be read by all' VOGUE'My father died eleven years ago. I was only four then. I never th...
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El tiempo entre costuras
María DueñasAn outstanding success around the world, The Time in Between has sold more than two million copies and inspired the Spanish television series based on the book, dubbed by the media...
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Why We Write
Meredith MaranTwenty of America's bestselling authors share tricks, tips, and secrets of the successful writing life.Anyone who's ever sat down to write a novel or even a story knows how exhilar...
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House on Endless Waters
Emuna Elon“Elon powerfully evokes the obscurity of the past and its hold on the present as we stumble through revelation after revelation with Yoel. As we accompany him on his journey…we sha...
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The Japanese Lover
Isabel AllendeFrom New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende, “a magical and sweeping” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) love story and multigenerational epic that stretches from San Fr...
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The Soul of a Woman
Isabel AllendeFrom the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes “a bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and more” (Associated Press).“Th...
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La isla bajo el mar
Isabel AllendeLa azarosa historia de una esclava en el Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII que logrará librarse de los estigmas que la sociedad le ha impuesto para conseguir la libertad.Para ser una e...
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The Spanish Daughter
Lorena Hughes“An engrossing, suspenseful family saga filled with unpredictable twists and turns.” Chanel Cleeton, New York Times bestselling author of Next Year in Havana“With an equal mix of h...
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Short Stories in Italian
Nick RobertsThis is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original Italian and in English translation. Including storie...
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The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende“Spectacular...an absorbing and distinguished work...The House of the Spirits...is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and futur...
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El viento conoce mi nombre
Isabel AllendeUna historia deviolencia, amor, desarraigo y esperanzaViena, 1938. Samuel Adler es un niño judío de seis años cuyo padre desaparece durante la Noche de los Cristales Rotos, en la q...
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The Wind Knows My Name
Isabel Allende & Frances RiddleNATIONAL BESTSELLER “The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazioccupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twentyfirstcentury El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate...
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The Enchanted
Charlotte BinghamExciting and dramatic but tender and heartfelt; this is a novel that you will return to again and again. From the million copy and Sunday Times bestselling author Charlotte Bingham...
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Hija de la fortuna
Isabel AllendeUn retrato palpitante de una época marcada por la violencia y la codicia, con entrañables personajes.Eliza Sommers es una joven chilena que vive en Valparaíso en 1849, el año en qu...
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Cuentos de Eva Luna
Isabel AllendeVeintitrés relatos de amor y violencia secretamente entrelazados por un fino hilo narrativo y un rico lenguaje que recrea azarosas peripecias en un mundo exuberante y voluptuoso.Un...
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The Power of the Heart
Baptist de PapeWith its unprecedented convocation of eighteen of the world’s greatest spiritual thinkers, writers, and scientists, including Maya Angelou, Deepak Chopra, Paulo Coelho, and Eckhart...
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The Diary of Lady Murasaki
Murasaki ShikibuThe Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973c. 1020), author of The Tale of Genji, is an intimate picture of her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi. Told in a s...
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The Courage to Write
Ralph KeyesThe Courage to Write is an invaluable book and essential reading for anyone who wishes to learn how to write well.Katherine Anne Porter called courage "the first essential" for a w...
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Eva Luna
Isabel AllendeEn Eva Luna, su tercera novela, Isabel Allende recupera su país a través de la memoria y la imaginación.La cautivadora protagonista de esta historia constituye un nostálgico álter ...
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Their Dogs Came with Them
Helena Maria ViramontesHelena Maria Viramontes brings 1960s Los Angeles to life with “terse, energetic, and vivid” (Publishers Weekly) prose in this story of a group of young Latinx women fighting to sur...
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The Stories of Eva Luna
Isabel AllendeTold in the voice of Isabel Allende’s beloved character Eva Luna, a “distinctive, powerful, and haunting” (Los Angeles Times) collection of short fiction by one of the most iconic ...
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De amor y de sombra
Isabel AllendeÉsta es la historia de una mujer y de un hombre que se amaron en plenitud, salvándose así de una existencia vulgar.Segunda novela de Isabel Allende, De amor y de sombra es un agudo...