Allende biography

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Who Is Isabel Allende?

Isabel Allende is a Chilean journalist and author born on August 2, , in Lima, Peru. Her best-known works include the novels The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts. She has written over 20 books that have been translated into more than 35 languages and sold more than 67 million copies.

Early Life

Isabel Allende was born on August 2, , in Lima, Peru, to Tomás and Francisca Allende. She is the goddaughter of Salvador Allende, the first socialist president of Chile who was her father's cousin. Her father, a diplomat, deserted the family when Allende was just two. She, her siblings and mother then moved in with her grandfather in Chile. Allende remembers herself as a rebellious child during those years living with her grandfather. “We lived in an affluent house – with no money," she said in an interview with The Telegraph. "My grandfather would pay for what was necessary but my mother did not even have the cash to buy us an ice cream. I wanted to be like my grandfather because my mother had a terrible life and he had all the privileges and the power and the freedom and the car – I think that was the moment I started to rebel against all male authority: the police, the church, everything."

Her mother remarried to Ramón Huidobro, also a diplomat, and the family moved often as his posts changed. Allende said she was determined to work as a young woman and started her writing career as a journalist. She became a prominent journalist working in television and for magazines in the s and s.

Literary Work

Allende's life was forever changed when General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup in , toppling Salvador Allende's government. During an attack on the presidential palace Salvador Allende was shot and killed. (After decades of controversy surrounding the cause of his death, an autopsy confirmed in that it was a suicide.) Isabel Allende became active in aiding victims of the repression an

Author

(b. )

California Connection

Has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since ; many of her books are set in California

Achievements

Biography current as of induction in

Isabel Allende received worldwide acclaim when her bestselling first novel, The House of the Spirits, was published in In addition to launching her career as a renowned author, the book, which grew out of a farewell letter to her dying grandfather, established her as a feminist force in Latin America’s male-dominated literary world.

She since has written 20 more works, including Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, Daughter of Fortune and her latest, The Japanese Lover. Allende’s books, all written in her native Spanish, have been translated into more than 35 languages and have sold over 67 million copies.

Allende’s works are informed by her feminist convictions, her commitment to social justice, and the harsh political realities that shaped her destiny. A prominent journalist for Chilean television and magazines, her life was forever altered when Gen. Augusto Pinochet led a military coup in that toppled Chile’s government. Allende’s cousin Salvador Allende, Chile’s president, died in the coup. The Pinochet regime was marked by repression and brutality, and Allende became involved with groups offering aid to its victims. Finding it unsafe to remain in Chile, she fled in , ultimately settling in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition to her work as a writer, Allende also devotes her time to human rights. Following the death of her daughter Paula in , she established in her honor a foundation dedicated to protecting and empowering women and children worldwide. Allende became a U.S. citizen in but, as she says, she lives with one foot in California and the other in Chile.

Selected Awards/Recognition

• Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award
• Chilean National Prize for

Chilean-American novelist and writer (born )

This article is about the Chilean author. For the Chilean politician, see Isabel Allende (politician).

For other uses, see Isabel Allende (disambiguation).

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Allende and the second or maternal family name is Llona.

Isabel Angelica Allende Llona (Latin American Spanish:[isaˈβelaˈʝende]; born 2 August ) is a Chilean-American writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the magical realism genre, is known for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, ) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, ), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." In , Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in , she received Chile's National Literature Prize. President Barack Obama awarded her the 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 , having lived in California since

Early life

Allende was born in Lima, Peru, in , 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 to

In , after Tomás left them, Isabel's mother relocated with her three children to Santiago, Chile, where they lived until ^[1

Isabel Allende recalls it as the day when Santiago went silent. On the morning of September 11, , Salvador Allende rushed to La Moneda, the Presidential palace, after learning of an unfolding military uprising. Tanks laid siege to La Moneda, a neoclassical building from the early eighteen-hundreds, as the armed forces called on President Allende to resign. Vowing to defend the Constitution, he declared, in a radio address, that he would not step down: “Social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force.” Minutes before noon, military planes bombed La Moneda, setting its north wing on fire and blanketing the rest in smoke. When troops later stormed in, they found the President’s body in one of the palace’s main halls, his hand resting near a rifle. By day’s end, Augusto Pinochet had taken power, marking the start of his seventeen-year rule. “That distant Tuesday in , my life was split in two,” Isabel Allende wrote decades later. “Nothing was ever again the same: I lost my country.”

Salvador Allende was her father’s first cousin. She believed in his vision—of transforming Chile into a freer, more equitable society, through la vía chilena, or the Chilean path to socialism—but worried about whether his project would prosper, in a world riven by competing ideologies. The disdain for President Allende among conservatives was no secret; neither was the White House’s opposition to him. The C.I.A., which backed those who deposed him, had tried to prevent him from taking power. But, like many others, Isabel Allende dismissed the rumors that his rule might be in question, or that democracy could be at stake. “We were proud of being different from other countries of the continent, which we scornfully referred to as ‘banana republics,’ ” Allende later wrote. “No, that would never happen to us, we proclaimed.”

After Pinochet took power, Allende, who worked as a TV anchor and a humor columnist, was let go. “There was nothing to laugh about—except those who were gov