Isabel Allende is considered to be among the greatest ever Latin American novelists. Her very successful novels are a mix of reality and mysticism. They are often based on her own experiences of life and of being a woman. She travels the world giving lectures and promoting her books. In 2003 she became a US citizen and currently lives in California with her family.
Allende was born in Lima, Peru in 1942. Her father was the Chilean ambassador. She is a distant cousin of former Chilean president Salvador Allende. Her family moved around a lot when she was young because of the political uncertainty in Chile in the 1960s. She grew up and went to school in Chile, Bolivia and Lebanon, where she learnt English.
Allende got married when she was 20. She became successful early on and had a variety of jobs. She was a well-known TV personality and a journalist for a feminist magazine. Between 1959 and 1965, she worked for the UN in Chile and Belgium. She also translated romantic novels from English to Spanish, which sparked her desire to write.
Pablo Neruda, a famous Chilean poet, told Allende she had too much imagination to be a journalist and should write novels instead. In 1981, she started writing her dying grandfather a letter. This eventually transformed into her first best seller ‘The House of the Spirits’ (1982). Allende was immediately compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. More best sellers, awards and internationalacclaim followed.
