Versión en español

Date and Place of birth:
born Aug. 2, 1942, Lima, Peru

Life and Works:

Chilean writer in the magic realist tradition who is considered one of the first successful woman novelists in Latin America.
Allende worked as a journalist in Chile (women's magazine “Paula”, children's magazine “Mampato”, television shows and movie documentaries) from 1964 to 1973, when she was forced to flee to Venezuela after the assassination (1973) of her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende Gossens.

She has also worked as a journalist from 1975 to 1984 in Venezuela (newspaper “El Nacional”) and has Published articles in newspapers and magazines in America and Europe and autorbusght Literature at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville Montclair College, New Jersey and the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1981 she began writing a letter to her terminally ill grandfather that evolved into her first novel, La casa de los espíritus (Spain 1982; The House of the Spirits). It was followed by the novels De amor y de sombra (Spain 1984; Of Love and Shadows), Eva Luna (Spain 1985), and El plan infinito (Spain 1991; The Infinite Plan) and a collection of short stories entitled Cuentos de Eva Luna (Spain 1989; The Stories of Eva Luna).

Allende's works are written in the style of magic realism, which is the use of fantasy and myth in realistic fiction, and often portray South American politics. Her first four works reflect her own experiences and examine the role of women in Latin America. El plan infinito, however, is set in the United States, and its protagonist is male.

Her first nonfiction work, Paula (Spain 1994; Eng. trans. 1995), was written as a letter to her daughter, who, afflicted with a hereditary blood disease, had fallen into a coma (she died in 1992).

Her mor recent works are: Aphrodite (recipes, stories and other aphrodisiacs) Spain 1997; Daughter of Fortune, (novel) Spain 1999; Portrait in Sepia (Retrato en sepia), (novel) Spain 2000 and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, young adult novel) published in Spain, 2002.