The result was the widely acclaimed international bestseller The House of the Spirits, which was soon followed by more works of fiction: Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, The Stories of Eva Luna, and, most recently, The Infinite Plan. She worked as a journalist for many years and only began writing fiction in 1981. In Paula we understand that the miraculous world of The House of the Spirits and Eva Luna is the world Isabel Allende inhabits-it is her enchanted reality.īorn in Peru, ISABELALLENDE was raised in Chile. The glorious characters of Allende' s fiction-clairvoyants, revolutionaries, and most of all the questing woman who makes her way through storytelling-populate this autobiography, perhaps Allende's finest work, and certainly her most revealing.

The result is a magicaI book that carries the reader from tears to laughter, from terror to sensuality and wisdom. Chile, Allende's native land, comes alive as well, with the turbulent history of the military coup of 1973, the ensuing dictatorship, and her family's years of exile.Īs an exorcismof death, in these pages Isabel Allende explores the past and questions the gods. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most intimate secrets passed along in whispers. During months in the hospital, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious daughter. In December 1991,Isabel Allende's daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and shortly thereafter fell into a coma.

The point of departure for these moving pages is a tragic personal experience. Paula is a soul-baring memoir, which, like a novel of suspense, one reads without drawing a breath.

With Paula, Allende has written a new tour de force, a powerful autobiography whose straightforward acceptance of the magicaI and spiritual worlds will remind readers of her first book, The House of the Spirits. One of the most highly praised and widely read writers of fiction to come out of Latin America in this century, Isabel Allende has mesmerized readers throughout the world with her own blend of magicaI realism.

Allende isabel paula