Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende, the niece of President Salvador Allende, who was assassinated in the 1973 military coup, has met with enthusiastic acclaim in Spanish-speaking countries with her debut work. This is not only because of the author's unmistakably great narrative talent, but also because of the great attitude with which she, certainly inspired by Gabriel García Marquez, the great role model, has undertaken to come to terms with the past in an imaginative and witty, tender and ironic, and at the same time with great seriousness and analytical acuity.

In Venezuelan exile, from the distance of almost a decade, Isabel Allende has traced the path Chile has taken with the fate of a family from the Chilean upper class. Didn't everything begin so harmlessly in the perfect world of Chile at the beginning of this century? What, then, other than the occasional earthquake, moved the prestigious del Valle family if not private events, such as the arrival of the mysterious giant dog Barrabas, or the failed attempt of the legendary Uncle Marco to cross the Andes in a homemade airplane, or the slightly disturbing, carefully concealed supernatural abilities of the youngest daughter Clara, under whose absent-minded gaze a salt barrel sometimes sets itself in motion on the dinner table? That Nívea, her mother, as a committed women's rights activist, one day chained herself to the bars of Congress with other ladies of fine society to enforce voting rights for women? A folly that provokes more ridicule than unrest. But