Isabel Allende

The author of several novels and a short fiction collection, as well as plays and stories for children, Isabel Allende (born 1942) has received international acclaim for her writing.

Allende earned the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voice Award nomination for her debut novel, La casa de los espíritus (1982; The House of the Spirits) - which became a best seller in Spain and West Germany in the 1980s and a 1994 movie - and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination for De amor y de sombra (1984; Of Love and Shadows). In 1988 Allende's third novel, Eva Luna, was voted One of the Year's Best Books by Library Journal.

Many of Allende's books are noted for their feminine perspective, dramatic qualities of romance and struggle, and the magic realism genre often found in Latin American literature. Her female characters survive hardships - imprisonment, starvation, the loss of loved ones - but never lose their spirit or ability to love others. Of Allende's House of Spirits, which has been compared to that of the Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Lori Carlson observed in Review: "There is a lot of love in The House of the Spirits. The love-making of powerful men and naive women, worn-out married couples and anxious rebels might even conjure up the reader's personal experience. But there is another kind of love in this book with which the reader cannot identify. It is a kind that requires forgiving the person whose torturous hand has shoved your face into a bucket of excrement. A spiritual force that can overcome a world sutured with evil, to beget art. Isabel Allende … tells in this, her first novel, a vibrant story of struggle and survival dedicated to her mother, grandmother, and 'other extraordinary' women in a country unnamed. Given the descriptions of events and people in the book … Chile quickly comes to mind."

Allende was born on August 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru. Her parents, Tomás, a Chilean diplomat, and Francisca (Llona Barros) Allende divorced when she was three, and she traveled with her mother to Santiago, Chile, where she was raised in her grandparents' home. Allende graduated from a private high school at the age of 16; three years later in 1962, she married her first husband, Miguel Frías, an engineer. Allende also went to work for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Santiago, where she was a secretary for several years. Later, she became a journalist, editor, and advice columnist for Paula magazine. In addition, she worked as a television interviewer and on movie newsreels.

Fled Chile

When her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende, was assassinated in 1973 as part of a right-wing military coup against his socialist government, Allende's life changed profoundly. Initially, she did not think that the new regime would endure, but later she came to realize that it was too dangerous to stay in Chile. As a result, Allende, her husband, and their two children fled to Venezuela. Although she had established a successful career as a journalist in Chile, Allende nevertheless had a difficult time finding work in journalism in Venezuela.

During her life in exile, Allende was inspired to write The House of the Spirits. The novel was adapted for the screen by the Danish writer and director Bille August and released in the United States in 1994. Based on Allende's memories of her family and the political upheaval in her native country, the book chronicles the personal and political conflicts in the lives of successive generations of a family in an anonymous Latin American country. These events are principally communicated through the memories of the novel's three central characters: Esteban and Clara, the patriarch and matriarch of the Trueba family, and Alba, their leftist granddaughter who falls into the hands of torturers during a military coup.

The House of Spirits was followed by Of Love and Shadows, which concerns the switching at birth of two infant girls. One of the babies grows up to become the focus of a journalist's investigation, and the revelation of her assassination compels the reporter and photographer to go into exile. The Detroit Free Press described Of Love and Shadows as "a frightening, powerful work," in which Allende "proves her continued capacity for generating excellent fiction," while the Toronto Globe and Mail commented that "Allende has some difficulty in getting her novel started because she has to weave two stories separately, and seems to be relying initially too much on her skills as a journalist."

On a lecture tour to San Jose, California, to promote the publication of Of Love and Shadows in the United States, Allende met William Gordon, a lawyer, who was an admirer of her work and with whom she fell in love. Having been divorced from her first husband for about a year, she married Gordon in 1988, and has lived with him in their suburban home in Marin, California, ever since.

Became Powerful Storyteller

Allende's next book, Eva Luna, focuses on the relationship between Eva - an illegitimate scriptwriter and story-teller - and Rolfe Carlé - an Austrian émigré filmmaker haunted by his father's Nazi past. The novel received positive reviews; for example, Abigail E. Lee in the Times Literary Supplement wrote, "Fears that Isabel Allende might be a 'one-book' writer … ought to be quashed by Eva Luna…. Allende moves between the personal and the political, between realism and fantasy, weaving two exotic coming-of-age stories - Eva Luna's and Rolfe Carlé's - into the turbulent coming of age of her unnamed South American country." Further, Alan Ryan of the Washington Post Book World asserted that Eva Luna is "a remarkable novel, one in which a cascade of stories tumbles out before the reader, stories vivid and passionate and human enough to engage, in their own right, all the reader's attention and sympathy."

Allende followed up this novel with Cuentos de Eva Luna (1991; The Stories of Eva Luna), in which the heroine of Eva Luna relates several stories to her lover Carlé. According to Alan Ryan in USA Today, "These stories transport us to a complex world of sensual pleasures, vivid dreams and breathless longings. It is a world in which passions are fierce, motives are profound and deeds have inexorable consequences." Anne Whitehouse of The Baltimore Sun noted that "Ms. Allende possesses the ability to penetrate the hearts of Eva's characters in a few brief sentences. …. These are profound, transcendent stories, which hold the mirror up to nature and in their strangeness reveal us to ourselves."

The Eva Luna stories were followed by El plan infinito (1993; The Infinite Plan) which, in a stylistic departure for Allende, features a male hero in a North American setting. Gregory Reeves is the son of a traveling preacher and prophet who settles in the Hispanic barrio of Los Angeles after becoming ill. As the only Anglo boy in the district, Reeves is tormented by local gang members. Eventually, he finds his way out of the barrio, does a tour of duty in Vietnam, and goes on to study law at Berkeley. The Infinite Plan received less praise than Allende's previous books; Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times described the novel as a "Bildungsroman-cum-family saga that owes more to Judith Krantz than to Gabriel García Márquez," concluding that it is "disappointing and mechanical." Still, as novelist Jane Smiley pointed out in her Boston Globe review, "Not many [émigré authors] have even attempted writing a novel from the point of view of a native of the new country."

Allende's latest work, Paula (1995), is a heartrending account of the circumstances surrounding the lengthy illness and death of her daughter in 1991. Commenting on the deeply emotive effect of Paula, the reviewer for Publishers Weekly declared that "[only] a writer of Allende's passion and skill could share her tragedy with her readers and leave them exhilarated and grateful." In September of 1996, Allende was honored at the Hispanic Heritage Awards for her contributions to the Hispanic American community.

Further Reading

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Yearbook 1985, Vol. 39, Detroit, Gale, 1986, pp. 27-36.

Hart, Patricia, Narrative Magic in the Fiction of Isabel Allende, Rutherford, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989.

Hispanic Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors, edited by Bryan Ryan, Detroit, Gale, 1991, pp. 15-18.

Baltimore Sun, March 3, 1991.

Boston Globe, May 16, 1993, pp. B39, B42.

Chicago Tribune Bookworld, May 19, 1985, pp. 37-38.

Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 1985; May 27, 1987.

Cosmopolitan, January 1991.

Dallas Morning News, February 1991, pp. 6J, 8J.

Detroit Free Press, June 7, 1987.

Detroit News, June 14, 1987.

Globe and Mail (Toronto), June 24, 1985; June 27, 1987.

London Review of Books, August 1, 1985, pp. 26-27.

Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1988; December 28, 1990, p. E5.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 16, 1985; May 31, 1987.

Mother Jones, December 1988, pp. 42-46.

Nation, July 20/27, 1985, pp. 52-54; March 11, 1991, pp. 314-16.

New Statesman, July 5, 1985, p. 29.

Newsweek, May 13, 1985, p. 82.

New York, April 11, 1994, p. 56+.

New York Newsday, July 23, 1993.

New York Review of Books, July 18, 1985, pp. 20-23.

New York Times, May 2, 1985; May 9, 1985, p. 23; May 20, 1987; February 4, 1988; June 25, 1993.

New York Times Book Review, May 12, 1985, pp. 1, 22-23; July 12, 1987; October 23, 1988; January 20, 1991.

Observer, June 7, 1985, p. 21.

People, June 10, 1985, p. 145; June 1, 1987.

Philadelphia Inquirer, March 3, 1991.

Publishers Weekly, March 1, 1985, p. 70; May 17, 1985; March 20, 1995.

Review, January-June, 1985, pp. 77-78.

Spectator, August 3, 1985.

Time, May 20, 1985, p. 79.

Times (London), July 4, 1985; July 9, 1987; March 22, 1989; March 23, 1989.

Times Literary Supplement, July 5, 1985; July 10, 1987; April 7-13, 1989.

Tribune Books (Chicago), October 9, 1988.

U.S. News and World Report, November 21, 1988.

USA Today, June 7, 1985, p. 4D; March 1, 1991.

Village Voice. June 4, 1985, p. 51; June 7, 1985.

Voice Literary Supplement, December, 1988.

Washington Post Book World, May 12, 1985, pp. 3-4; May 24, 1987; October 9, 1988.

Allende, Isabel, 1942–, Chilean novelist. Since the 1973 coup that deposed her uncle, President Salvador Allende Gossens, Isabel Allende, who is among the most notable contemporary Chilean writers, has lived abroad, for many of those years in California. Her fiction is distinguished by its fusion of traditional realism with political (including feminist) concerns. Her first and best-known novel, The House of Spirits (1982, tr. 1985), which reflects the influence of Gabriel García Márquez and the technique of magic realism, tells the story of a Chilean family over three generations. Allende's fiction also includes Of Love and Shadows (1984, tr. 1987); Eva Luna (1987, tr. 1988); The Infinite Plan (1991, tr. 1993), her first work set in the United States; Daughter of Fortune (1998, tr. 1999); Portrait in Sepia (2001); and Inés of My Soul (2006), the fictionalized life of a 16th-century conquistadora.

Bibliography

See her memoirs, Paula (1994, tr. 1995), Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1997, tr. 1998), and My Invented Country (2003); J. Rodden, ed., Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999, repr. 2004); studies by W. Zinsser (1989), P. Hart (1989), S. R. Rojas and E. Aguirre, ed. (1991), R. G. Feal and Y. E. Miller, ed. (2002), L. G. Levine (2002), H. Bloom, ed. (2003), and K. C. Cox (2003).

(1942-)

Isabel Allende is a Chilean-born novelist whose experiences as a journalist and the niece of assassinated socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, have made politics an integral part of her life. Salvador Allende's murder in 1973 as part of a military coup had a profound effect on the novelist; "I think I have divided my life [into] before that day and after that day," she told Publishers Weekly interviewer Amanda Smith. "In that moment, I realized that everything was possible—that violence was a dimension that was always around you." The world view that was shaped by this experience forms an integral part of Allende's novels for adults, which include The House of the Spirits, Eva Luna, and Daughter of Fortune.

In the mid-1990s, at the urging of her grandchildren, Allende turned to a young-adult audience and wrote the first book in the "Alexander Cold" series, about an eighteen year old who joins his travel-writer grandmother on a series of globe-hopping trips that reveal the beauty and danger of the world's most magical regions. She has also penned the historical novel Zorro, a "lively retelling" of the popular legend that, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "reads as effortlessly as the [Mexican-American] hero himself might slice his trademark 'Z'"

After the fall of her uncle's democratic government in Chile, Allende and her family fled to Venezuela. Although she had been a noted journalist in Chile, she found it difficult to get a job and did not write for several years. However, after receiving word from her aged grandfather, who had remained in Chile, she put pen to paper and composed a letter to him. "My grandfather thought people died only when you forgot them," the author explained to Harriet Shapiro in People. "I wanted to prove to him that I had forgotten nothing, that his spirit was going to live with us forever." Allende never sent the letter, as the old man died shortly thereafter, but the act of writing a letter to him sparked memories of her family and her country and inspired her first novel, The House of the Spirits.

Following three generations of the Trueba family and their domestic and political conflicts, The House of the Spirits was published in its original Spanish in 1982. Called "a novel of peace and reconciliation" by New York Times Book Review contributor Alexander Coleman, the novel introduces family patriarch Esteban Trueba, a strict conservative who exploits his workers and allows his uncompromising beliefs to distance him from his wife and children, even in the face of tremendous events. Allende's use of fantastic elements and characters led critics to classify The House of the Spirits as an example of "magic realism," a style popularized by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude. "Allende has her own distinctive voice, however," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer; "while her prose lacks the incandescent brilliance of the master's, it has a whimsical charm, besides being clearer, more accessible and more explicit about the contemporary situation in South America." Washington Post Book World critic Jonathan Yardley also noted comparisons to Márquez, but concluding that Allende "is most certainly a novelist in her own right and, for a first novelist, a startlingly skillful, confident one."

Allende's adult novels have continued to explore the intersection between violence and family history. Of Love and Shadows begins with the switching of two identically named newborn infants, one of which grows up to become the focus of a journalist's investigation as romance and a danger-fraught search for the truth intertwine. Gene H. Bell-Villada, reviewing the novel for the New York Times Book Review, noted that "Allende skillfully evokes both the terrors of daily life under military rule and the subtler form of resistance in the hidden corners and 'shadows' of her title," while Christian Science Monitor reviewer Marjorie Agosin declared the book to be "a love story of two young people sharing the fate of their historical circumstances, meeting the challenge of discovering the truth, and determined to live their life fully, accepting their world of love and shadows." The Tales of Eva Luna focuses on an orphaned young woman who, as a scriptwriter, finds her world colliding with that of an Austrian filmmaker haunted by traumatic memories of World War II. Eva Luna is "filled with a multitude of characters and tales," recounted Washington Post Book World contributor Alan Ryan. A "cascade of stories tumbles out before the reader, stories vivid and passionate and human enough to engage, in their own right, all the reader's attention and sympathy."

Two of Allende's more recent novels share characters with her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Daughterof Fortune takes place during the California gold rush of the mid-1800s, and focuses on Eliza Somers, who spends several years disguised as a boy. Cecilia Novella remarked in Amerícas that in the novel Allende "provides us with a masterly description of that part of North America that was to become California at the height of the gold rush, painting a vivid picture of boisterous activity, chaos, avarice, unrelieved drudgery, and the broad range of lifestyles, habits and dissolute ways of those drawn there by the gleaming precious metal." A sequel of sorts, Portrait in Sepia finds Aurora del Valle filled with questions about the mysterious beginnings of her life. At age five she was sent to live with her grandmother, Paulina, a wealthy woman who provided Aurora with material comforts but refused to answer questions about the past. The girl's confusion lingers until adulthood, when she becomes a talented photographer. After Paulina's death, Aurora explores her own and her family's past, examining her memories as well as those of relatives. According to Teresa R. Arrington in World Literature Today, "The three novels represent a transnational saga that shows us how major historical events across the world can affect the lives of several generations of an extended Chilean family." In Book, Beth Kephart observed, "Allende's imagination is a spectacle unto itself—she infects her readers with her own colossal dreams."

City of the Beasts is the first of several novels that Allende has written for a younger audience. As she told Booklist interviewer Hazel Rochman, "The idea of writing for young adults wasn't mine; it was something that my three grandchildren had been asking me to do for a long time." Alexander Cold, the main character in the novel series, is modeled after Allende's grandson, Alejandro Frias, while another character, Nadia Santos, was inspired by her two granddaughters, Andrea and Nicole. In City of the Beasts fifteen-year-old Alexander is sent to stay with his grandmother, Kate Cold, in the Amazon while his mother receives chemotherapy in Texas. Kate, an adventurous travel writer for International Geography, is researching the Yeti, a mysterious creature living in the Amazon jungle. Kate and Alexander join a group of adventurers that includes a self-centered anthropologist, a government doctor, and the jungle guide Cesar Santos, who brings with him his daughter, Nadia. Soon, Alexander and Nadia soon find themselves facing a battle with a supernatural evil, but with aid from a local shaman and the invisible People of the Mist, they tap into their inner totemic powers (Alexander's is a jaguar and Nadia's is an eagle) and prevail. A Publishers Weekly reviewer praised Allende's coming-of-age story as an adventure tale that "moves at a rapid pace, laced with surprises and ironic twists," while in Booklist Hazel Rochman wrote that City of the Beasts "blends magical realism with grim history and contemporary politics in a way that shakes up all the usual definitions of savagery and civilization."

Like City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies also feature Alexander, Nadia, and Alexander's grandmother Kate. They also feature a similar formula: an "environmentalist theme, a pinch of the grotesque, and a larger dose of magic," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. In Kingdom of the Golden Dragon the teens—now aged sixteen—travel with Kate to the Himalayas where they hope to track down a rare statue, the Golden Dragon, which is rumored be the key to foretelling the future of the remote mountain kingdom. In this forbidding—and forbidden—land the group discovers a corporate plot to steal the statue that involves kidnaping and murder. Joined by a Buddhist monk and a band of Yeti, Alex and Nadia soon find themselves enmeshed in another battle against evil in a novel that a Publishers Weekly contributor praised for its "complex heroes, suspenseful tests of courage" that confront Alex and his friends, and the "mystic aura" Allende creates to "add depth and excitement" to her tale. The author "combines empathetic young characters; exciting adventures; and an intelligent, sympathetic look at cultures, customs, and creatures of a remote ... area," added Susan L. Rogers in School Library Journal, noting that Kingdom of the Golden Dragon stands on its own as a fast-paced teen adventure.

In Forest of the Pygmies, the final volume of the "Alexander Cold" trilogy, Alexander is now eighteen, and on his way to Africa where he, Nadia, and Kate join an elephant-led safari. After a Catholic missionary asks for help locating some friends lost in the jungle swamps, a world of corruption is revealed: poachers deplete the wildlife while a savage ex-military tyrant who wears a necklace made from human fingers attempts to enslave both Bantu and Pygmy tribes. Into the fray come Alex and his friends, rallying the diminutive Africans and drawing on animal totems and other magic in their battle for freedom. While noting that the teens' ability to transform into their totems might confuse readers new to Allende's series, Eva Mitnick wrote in School Library Journal that Forest of the Pygmies is "a fine adventure tale" featuring the author's characteristic "lyrical" language.

In My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile Allende examines, in fictional form, her own history as it fits within her family story and the larger history of Chile as well as that of her adopted country, the United States. In Booklist, Donna Seaman maintained that "Allende's conjuring of her 'invented,' or imaginatively remembered, country is riveting in its frankness and compassion, and her account of why and how she became a writer is profoundly moving." In this, as in all her works, Allende examines the facts of cultural and political history and transforms those facts into something more through story and memory. While writing remains the focus of her public life, Allende's ultimate goal is more personal. As she told San Francisco Chronicle interviewer Heather Knight, "I'd like to be remembered by my grandchildren as a grandma who gave them unconditional love, stories, and laughter."

Career

United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, Santiago, Chile, secretary, 1959-65; Paula magazine, Santiago, journalist, editor, and advice columnist, 1967-74; Mampato magazine, Santiago, journalist, 1969-74; television interviewer for Canal 13/Canal 7 (television station), 1970-75; worked on movie newsreels, 1973-78; El Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela, journalist, 1974-75, columnist, 1976-83; Colegio Marroco, Caracas, administrator, 1979-82; writer. Guest teacher at Montclair State College, 1985, and University of Virginia, 1988; Gildersleeve Lecturer, Barnard College, 1988; teacher of creative writing, University of California, Berkeley, 1989.

Awards, Honors

Panorama Literario Award (Chile), 1983; Grand Prix d'Evasion (France), 1984; Author of the Year and Book of the Year awards (Germany), 1984; Point de Mire (Belgium), 1985; Colima award for best novel (Mexico), 1985; Author of the Year award (Germany), 1986; Quality Paperback Book Club New Voice Award nomination, 1986, for The House of the Spirits; Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination, 1987, for Of Love and Shadows; XV Premio Internazionale (Italy), and Mulheres best foreign novel award (Portugal), both 1987; Library Journal Best Books of 1988 designation, American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1989, Freedom to Write Pen Club Award, 1991, and XLI Bancarella Literature Award (Italy), and Brandeis University Major Book Collection Award, both 1993, all for The Stories of Eva Luna; named Hans Christian Andersen goodwill ambassador, 2004.

Writings

For Young Adults; "Alexander Cold" Series

• La Ciudad de las bestias, Rayo (New York, NY), 2002, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as City of the Beasts (young adult), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.
• El Reino del dragón de oro, Montena Mondadori (Barcelona, Spain), translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.
• El Bosque de los Pigmeos, Rayo (New York, NY), 2004, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden as Forest of the Pygmies, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Other

• Civilice a su troglodita: Los impertinentes de Isabel Allende (humor), Editorial Lord Cochran (Santiago, Chile), 1974.
• La Casa de los espíritus, Plaza y Janés (Barcelona, Spain), 1982, HarperLibros (New York, NY), 1985, translation by Magda Bogin published as The House of the Spirits, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985.
• La Gorda de porcelana (juvenile; title means "The Fat Porcelain Lady"), Alfaguara (Madrid, Spain), 1984.
• De amor y de sombra, Plaza y Janés (Barcelona, Spain), 1984, HarperLibros (New York, NY), 1995, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as Of Love and Shadows, Knopf (New York, NY), 1987.
• Eva Luna, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published under same title, Knopf (New York, NY), 1988, HarperLibros (New York, NY), 1995.
• Cuentos de Eva Luna, Plaza y Janés (Barcelona, Spain), 1990, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as The Stories of Eva Luna, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1991.
• El Plan infinito, Editorial Sudamericana (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1991, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as The Infinite Plan, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.
• Paula (autobiography), Plaza y Janés (Barcelona, Spain), 1994, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.
• (With others) Salidas de madre, Planeta (Santiago, Chile), 1996.
• Afrodita: Recetas, cuentos y otros afrodisiacos, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses, HarperFlamingo (New York, NY), 1998.
• Hija de la fortuna (novel), Plaza y Janés (Barcelona, Spain), 1999, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as Daughter of Fortune, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.
• (And author of foreword) Conversations with Isabel Allende, edited by John Rodden, translations from the Spanish by Virginia Invernizzi and from the German and Dutch by John Rodden, University of Texas (Austin, TX), 1999, revised edition, 2004.
• Retrato en sepia, Plaza y Janés (Barcelona, Spain), 2000, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as Portrait in Sepia, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.
• Mi país inventado, Areté (Barcelona, Spain), 2003, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden published as My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.
• Zorro, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.
• Author of several plays and stories for children. Contributor to Los Libros tienen sis propios espíritus, edited by Marcello Coddou, Universidad Veracruzana, 1986; Paths of Resistance: The Art and Craft of the Political Novel, edited by William Zinsser, Houghton Mifflin, 1989; and El Amor: Grandes escritores latinoamericanos, Ediciones Instituto Movilizador, 1991.

Adaptations

The House of the Spirits was adapted for film by Bille August, starring Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Antonio Banderas, and Vanessa Redgrave, 1993. City of the Beasts was adapted as an audiobook, read by Blair Brown, Harper Audio, 2002. Kingdom of the Golden Dragon was adapted for audio, read by Brown, Harper Audio, 2004.

Biographical and Critical Sources

Books

• Bloom, Harold, editor, Isabel Allende, Chelsea House (Philadelphia, PA), 2003.
• Contemporary Hispanic Biography, Volume 1, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2003.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 39, 1986, Volume 57, 1990, Volume 97, 1997.
• Feal, Rosemary G., and Yvette E. Miller, editors, Isabel Allende Today: An Anthology of Essays, Latin American Literary Review Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2002.
• Hart, Patricia, Narrative Magic in the Fiction of Isabel Allende, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Teaneck, NJ), 1989.
• Levine, Linda Gould, Isabel Allende, Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 2002.
• Lindsay, Claire, Locating Latin American Women Writers: Cristina Peri Rossi, Rosario Ferré, Albalucía, and Isabel Allende, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 2003.
• Postlewate, Marisa Herrera, How and Why I Write: Redefining Women's Writing and Experience, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 2004.
• Ramblado-Minero, Maria de la Cinta, Isabal Allende's Writing of the Self: Trespassing the Boundaries of Fiction and Autobiography, E. Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 2003.
• Rojas, Sonia Riquelme, and Edna Aguirre Rehbein, editors, Critical Approaches to Isabel Allende's Novels, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1991.
• Zapata, Celia Correas, Isabel Allende: Life and Spirits, translation by Margaret Sayers Peden, Arte Público Press (Houston, TX), 2002.

Periodicals

• Amerícas, November-December, 1995, p. 36; September, 1999, Cecilia Novella, review of Daughter of Fortune, p. 61; October, 2001, Barbara Mujica, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. 63.
• Architectural Digest, April, 1995, p. 32.
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 2, 2000, Greg Changnon, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. C4.
• Book, November-December, 2001, Beth Kephart, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. 60.
• Booklist, February 1, 1998, p. 875; August, 1999, Brad Hooper, review of Daughter of Fortune, p. 1984; September 1, 2001, Brad Hooper, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. 3; November 15, 2002, Hazel Rochman, review of City of the Beasts, p. 590, and interview with Allende, p. 591; April 1, 2003, Donna Seaman, review of My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile, p. 1354; February 15, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, p. 1050; March 15, 2005, Hazel Rochman, review of Forest of the Pygmies, p. 1284.
• Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1985.
• Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 1985; May 27, 1987.
• Detroit Free Press, June 7, 1987.
• Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), June 24, 1985; June 27, 1987.
• Guardian, November 13, 1999, Alex Clark, review of Daughter of Fortune, p. 10; November 30, 2002, Carol Birch, review of City of the Beasts, p. 33.
• Horn Book, January-February, 2003, Christine M. Heppermann, review of City of the Beasts, p. 65.
• Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2002, review of City of the Beasts, p. 1462; April 1, 2003, review of My Invented Country, p. 514; April 1, 2004, review of Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, p. 323; April 15, 2005, review of Forest of the Pygmies, p. 467.
• Kliatt, May, 2005, Paula Rohrlick, review of Forest of the Pygmies, p. 6.
• Library Journal, August, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of Daughter of Fortune, p. 134; October 15, 2001, Barbara Hoffert, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. 105; June 1, 2003, Sheila Kasperek, review of My Invented Country, p. 118; October 15, 2003, Gloria Maxwell, review of My Invented Country, p. 115; March 1, 2005, Misha Stone, review of Zorro, p. 74.
• Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1988. Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 16, 1985; May 31, 1987.
• Mother Jones, December, 1988.
• Ms., May-June, 1995, p. 75.
• Nation, July 20-27, 1985.
• New Leader, November-December, 2001, Philip Graham, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. 38.
• New Statesman, July 5, 1985.
• Newsweek, May 13, 1985.
• New York Review of Books, July 18, 1985.
• New York Times, May 2, 1985; May 20, 1987; February 4, 1988.
• New York Times Book Review, May 12, 1985; July 12, 1987; October 23, 1988; May 21, 1995, p. 11.
• People, June 10, 1985; June 1, 1987; June 5, 1995, p. 34; April 20, 1998, p. 47.
• Publishers Weekly, March 1, 1985; May 17, 1985; January 19, 1998, p. 360; August 23, 1999, review of Daughter of Fortune p. 41; July 16, 2001, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. 1142; June 24, 2002, review of City of the Beasts, p. 58; April 28, 2003, review of My Invented Country, p. 57; June 30, 2003, review of City of the Beasts; March 15, 2004, review of Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, p. 75; February 28, 2005, review of Zorro, p. 39.
• Review of Contemporary Fiction, summer, 2000, Sophia A. McClennan, review of Daughter of Fortune, p. 184.
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 28, 2001, Jan Garden Castro, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. G11.
• San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 2001, Heather Knight, review of City of the Beasts, p. 1.
• School Library Journal, December, 2002, "Isabelle Allende on Her Magical Adventures" (interview), p. 58; April, 2004, Susan L. Rogers, review of Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, p. 148; June, 2005, Eva Mitnick, review of Forest of the Pygmies, p. 147.
• Sunday Telegraph (London, England), October 14, 2001, Jenny McCartney, review of Portrait in Sepia.
• Time, May 20, 1985.
• Times (London, England), July 4, 1985; July 9, 1987; March 22, 1989; March 23, 1989.
• Times Literary Supplement, July 5, 1985; July 10, 1987; April 7-13, 1989.
• Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 9, 1988.
• U.S. News and World Report, November 21, 1988.
• Village Voice, June 7, 1985.
• Voice Literary Supplement, December, 1988.
• Wall Street Journal, March 20, 1998.
• Washington Post Book World, May 12, 1985; May 24, 1987; October 9, 1988; July 24, 2005, Elizabeth Ward, review of Forest of the Pygmies, p. 11.
• World Literature Today, winter, 2002, Teresa R. Arrington, review of Portrait in Sepia, p. 115.
• World Press Review, April, 1995, p. 47.

Online

• Isabel Allende Web site,http://www.isabelallende.com(July 20, 2005).*

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)