Isabel Allende

Biografía de Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is a Chilean author born into a family of diplomats, with her father being the Chilean ambassador to Peru. This led her to grow up and study in countries such as Peru, Bolivia, Lebanon, and Chile, receiving a high-quality private education in American schools.

Initially based in Santiago, Chile, Allende worked as a journalist for children’s and women’s magazines. She later worked for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which took her on long stays in Europe. In the 1960s, she married Miguel Frías and had two children: a daughter named Paula, whose death inspired her most sentimental and personal work, Paula, and a son named Nicolás. Following the coup d’état in Chile in the early 1970s, Allende first went into exile in Venezuela, where she worked for the Caracas newspaper El Nacional and published her first work, The House of the Spirits. Later, she went to the United States, where she has been living with her second husband.

Allende combined her work as a journalist while in exile in Venezuela with writing her first novel, The House of the Spirits, a work that became an international phenomenon and was adapted into a film and a play. From that point on, she decided to fully dedicate herself to literature, developing a remarkable career.

She is one of the most widely read Spanish-language writers of all time and has published novels, children’s stories, and plays. Much of her work is categorized as magical realism, but she has also delved into crime and historical novels. Her language is simple, clear, and marked by a feminist component.

Throughout her career, she has sold millions of copies of her books, with translations into many languages. Among her notable works are titles such as The House of the Spirits, Inés of My Soul, Island Beneath the Sea, and The Japanese Lover.

Allende has received numerous awards for her works, such as the National Literature Prize of Chile in 2010.