Her own life experiences also give a greater depth to her work. They returned to Chile in so that Allende could continue her education there. Allende married in , and though she had two children she adored, Paula and Nicolas, she is said to have been torn between her submissive role at home with her husband, and her public popularity as a television personality, writer, and feminist.
On a humorous note, she also worked briefly at translating romance novels from English to Spanish, but was fired for making unapproved changes that made the female protagonists appear more intelligent, independent, and charitable. Interestingly, as a journalist she had hoped to interview famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Instead, he refused, telling her that she had too great an imagination to be a journalist, and should instead be a novelist. He encouraged her to turn her satirical columns into a book format, which ultimately became her first published book.
There she is surrounded by most of her family, including her son, son-in-law, and grandchildren. Her literary star has also continued to shine despite the personal trials she endured, and in , she was honored with the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit, becoming the first woman to ever receive the prestigious award. She also received the Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize for writers. In she was even one of the 8 flag bearers at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Italy!
Also, every book is a different challenge, with a different way of being told. Paula was a memoir about the death of your daughter; The House of the Spirits was a letter to your dying grandfather.
Did work help you overcome those tragedies? It was healing. It will forever be in that book. After my daughter died, everything was dark. All the color was gone from my life.
All days seemed alike. She had been in a coma for a year, and I had taken care of her at home. A month later my mother gave me back letters I had sent her during that year, and I started writing. It was very painful, but also healing, because I could contain what had happened in those pages and it allowed me to see around me again.
My grandchildren were being born. I had a husband who loved me. There was life all over. You seem very comfortable making your private life public. You mentioned the many foreign editions of your books. Why do you think your work resonates in different cultures?
We focus always on the differences—skin color, culture, language, nationality, whatever—but people all over are very similar. They all fear the same things. They all want the same things. We all have exactly the same organs inside, the same brains, the same dreams.
So a story about aging that happens in San Francisco resonates in Turkey. Because I wanted to support myself. One thing that shaped me in my life was seeing my mother as a victim. She depended completely on her father. I adored my two children, too, but I trusted my mother-in-law and an adopted grandmother to help me raise them, because I needed to get out in the world. You once tried to write a book with your husband, now ex, a crime novelist.
How did that work? He writes in English; I write in Spanish. His attention span is 11 minutes; I write for 11 hours. And so I wrote Ripper, and he went on to write his fifth crime novel. Was that hard? Why would I be watching over the shoulder of a director? You sell the option for not a lot of money, and they do whatever they want. 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.
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. 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 and brutality of Pinochet's regime, but realizing it was dangerous to stay in Chile, she fled the country with her husband and two children in and lived in exile in Venezuela for 13 years.
In , Allende began writing a letter to her grandfather, who was dying in Chile. The letter became the basis for her first novel, The House of the Spirits , which became a worldwide bestseller and launched her literary career.
The novel tells the story of two families living in Chile from the s until the military coup, weaving together elements of magical realism and political testimony. At the urging of her three grandchildren, Allende wrote her first book for young adults, City of the Beasts , which was published in It was the first book in a trilogy for young readers, which also included Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies
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