Isabel Allende: The Iconic and Prolific Chilean Writer

Isabel Allende is one of the most famous and successful Latina authors of all time and considered the most widely read Spanish-language author. Born in Peru, she lived the majority of her young life in Chile during and after the presidency of her first cousin once removed, Salvador Allende, which was overthrown in a military coup in 1973. At risk of political persecution because of her progressive political beliefs, she fled to Venezuela, where she wrote her debut novel, The House of the Spirits. It became an instant best-seller and remains her most well-known book. In the late ’80s, she made a permanent move to the U.S. and has since lived in California, where she continues to write and publish novels almost annually. As of 2024, she has written 22 works of fiction and five works of nonfiction for children, teens, and adults. Her most recent is The Wind Knows My Name, which follows a Jewish boy and a Salvadoran migrant girl across two time periods and places in history. The massive success of her debut work and the novels that followed have made her the first Latin American woman to achieve worldwide fame as an author.

Allende has continued to flourish in her decades-long career and is seen by the Latinx community as a champion for Latinas everywhere. Almost all of her novels center on women, who each make sacrifices to break down barriers and resist the patriarchal values of their world. Read on to learn more about this iconic writer and her impact on Latin American literature.

Early Life

Isabel Angélica Allende Llona was born in Lima, Peru on August 2, 1942 to Chilean parents Tomás and Francisca Allende. She came from an upper class family however, when Allende was just two-years-old, her father abandoned the family, forcing her, her siblings, and her mother to move in with her grandfather back in Santiago, Chile. They lived in his house until 1953 when Francisca remarried Ramón Huidobro, who was a diplomat to Bolivia and Beirut. As a result, the family found themselves moving around various countries including Bolivia and Lebanon. Even so, Allende was able to attend private schools and read often, paving the way for her career as a journalist and novelist.

In her early 20s, she returned to Chile and met Miguel Frías, an engineering student at school whom she married in 1992 and had two children with. Despite being a mom and wife, she remained steadfast in her professional pursuits. Over the next two decades, she would rise to prominence as a journalist for the feminist magazine Paula and the children’s magazine Mampato, where she was promoted to editor. She was also a TV personality becoming relatively well-known in her country. During this time, she was able to conduct an interview with famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who advised her to become a novelist instead. Not too long after, she wrote a play El Embajador, which was performed in a theater in Santiago in 1973.

She also briefly held other jobs in both Chile and Venezuela, such as working with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, serving as a school administrator, and being a book translator. However, she was fired not long after when her supervisors discovered she’d made unauthorized changes to the dialogue of the female characters to make them sound more well-rounded and intelligent, as well as changing endings to make them more independent.

Political Unrest & Exile

For many, including Allende, the presidency of Salvador Allende was a good thing. He had promised to bring about socialist reform to the country, which was historic for the region, but he lacked widespread support due to an economic crisis. However, in 1973, he was overthrown and killed in a violent military coup by General Augusto Pinochet and his forces, which was later discovered to have been backed by the CIA. It led to a military dictatorship that would last for 17 years, resulting in the suppression of opposing political parties, kidnappings, murders, and the torturing of thousands of Chileans, often without cause.

At first, Allende wanted to stay in order to fight for her country. She worked in the underground resistance, arranging safe passage out of Chile for those who were being victimized and targeted by the regime and had to flee the country. She did this for a time until her mother and stepfather were almost assassinated and she herself began to be threatened for her opposition. As a result, she was forced to flee to Venezuela with her husband and children, where she lived in exile for 13 years. At this time, she was still able to be a writer, working as a columnist for the national newspaper El Nacional.

Career as a Writer

Almost a decade into living in Venezuela, it was January 8, 1981 when Allende received a call and found out that her grandfather, whom she had grown close to her the years, was terminally ill and still in Chile. That same day, she began writing a letter to him in order to keep him alive in some way, at least in her mind, which would become the first manuscript of her debut novel, The House of the Spirits, which follows several decades of two families living in Chile from 1920 to 1973. Incorporating magical realism and her personal experiences of political unrest, the book was rejected by dozens of publishers in Latin America. Finally, however, it was published by a press in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and went on to become an instant best-seller all over the world, propelling her to literary stardom. It has since been translated into more than 20 languages and published in more than 24 different editions in Spanish.

Since then, Allende has written and published 27 works of fiction and nonfiction for all ages including Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, Ines of my Soul, A Long Petal of the Sea, Portrait in Sepia, and The Japanese Lover. She has also written multiple memoirs like Paula, named after her daughter who died suddenly after a mistake in her medication caused severe brain damage in 1992 at the age of 29. She also details her early life growing up in Peru and Chile in My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile. Throughout her career, she often explores consistent themes like politics, feminism, womanhood, the relationships between and among women, and the impact of history. She has often been compared to Gabriel García Marquez for her use of magical realism, which blends fantasy with realism to create a world that is similar but also eerily different from our own. Her most recent novel, The Wind Knows My Name, was a national best-seller in the U.S. and her latest memoir, The Soul of a Woman, covered womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, and love.

Several of her books have received film adaptations including The House of the Spirits, Zorro, and Of Love and Shadows. Currently, The House of the Spirits is being adapted for TV by Eva Longoria, who is also slated to star in the project. Her young adult trilogy The City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and Forest of the Pygmies have been optioned for film since 2006.

Legacy

Allende has been widely recognized and lauded for her literary work as well as her humanitarian efforts. In 2010, she won the Chilean National Prize for Literature and the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction. Four years later, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-President Barack Obama, the highest civilian honor. She also holds several honorary degrees from institutions like Whittier College, San Francisco State University, and Harvard University. This year, she was honored with her own Barbie doll as part of the Barbie Inspiring Women Series. Her foundation, The Isabel Allende Foundation, was founded on December 9, 1996 in honor of her daughter and helps reproductive rights, economic independence and freedom from violence. Her life and career were at the center of limited series on Max, Isabel: The Intimate Story of Isabel Allende, which was released to critical acclaim in 2021. Her work has been translated into 42 languages and she’s dold more than 74 million copies worldwide cementing her status as one of the most iconic and beloved writers across the globe.