Isabel Allende

Early life Allende was born in Lima, Peru, in 1942, the daughter of Francisca Llona Barros called "Doña Panchita" (the daughter of Agustín Llona Cuevas and Isabel Barros Moreira, of Portuguese descent) and Tomás Allende, who was at the time a second secretary at the Chilean embassy. Her father Tomás was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.

In 1945, after Tomás left them, In 1953 Allende's mother married Ramón Huidobro and the family moved often. Huidobro was a diplomat appointed to Bolivia and Beirut. In La Paz, Bolivia, Allende attended an American private school; and in Beirut, Lebanon, she attended an English private school. The family returned to Chile in 1958, where Allende was also briefly home-schooled. In her youth, she read widely, particularly the works of William Shakespeare.

In 1970, Salvador Allende appointed Huidobro as ambassador to Argentina. However, she was fired for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue of the heroines to make them sound more intelligent, as well as altering the Cinderella ending to allow the heroines to find more independence and do good in the world.

Exile in Venezuela In 1973, Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Isabel found herself arranging safe passage for people on the "wanted lists", which she continued to do until her mother and stepfather narrowly escaped assassination. When she herself was added to the list and began receiving death threats, she fled to Venezuela, where she stayed for 13 years. It was during this time that Allende wrote her debut novel The House of the Spirits (1982). Allende has stated her move from Chile made her a serious writer: "I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be." Allende believed that, being female in a patriarchal family, she was not expected to be a "liberated" person. In Venezuela she was a columnist for El Nacional, a major national newspaper.

Journalism

Beginning in 1967, Allende was on the editorial staff of Paula magazine and the children's magazine from 1969 to 1974, where she later became the editor. She published two children's stories, "La Abuela Panchita" and "Lauchas y Lauchones", as well as a collection of articles, Civilice a Su Troglodita. She also worked in Chilean television production for channels 7 and 13 from 1970 to 1974.

Although Allende is often cited as a practitioner of magical realism, her works also display elements of post-Boom literature. Allende also holds to a very strict writing routine. She writes on a computer, working Monday to Saturday, 09:00 to 19:00. "I always start on 8 January", Allende stated, "a tradition she began in 1981 with the letter she wrote to her dying grandfather that would become The House of the Spirits."

Allende's book Paula (1995) is a memoir of her childhood in Santiago and the years she spent in exile. It is written as an anguished letter to her daughter. In 1991 an error in Paula's medication resulted in severe brain damage, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state. Allende spent months at Paula's bedside before learning that a hospital mishap had caused the brain damage. Allende had Paula moved to a hospital in California where she died on 6 December 1992.

Allende's novels have been translated into more than 42 languages and sold more than 77 million copies. Her 2008 book, The Sum of Our Days, is a memoir. It focuses on her life with her family, which includes her grown son, Nicolás; second husband, William Gordon; and several grandchildren. Novelist Gonzalo Contreras said that "she commits a grave error, to confuse commercial success with literary quality".

Allende told El Clarín that she recognizes she has not always received good reviews in Chile, stating that Chilean intellectuals "detest" her. However, she disagrees with these assessments:

It has been said that "Allende's impact on Latin American and world literature cannot be overestimated." She presented the talk Tales of Passion at TED 2007. In 1994, she was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit, the first woman to receive this honor. In 2014, Allende received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Harvard University for her contributions to literature.

Politics Allende has been a life-long feminist; describing herself as "a feminist in kindergarten", she was expelled from school for insubordination, after she had observed how much more privileged her brothers already were. She also supports abortion rights.

Although not as openly political as some of her contemporary writers, she expressed contempt for Donald Trump and his policies following his election in 2016, and she later endorsed Democrat Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election. In 2025, Allende again criticized Trump, accusing him of misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, stating "The Supreme Court has been stripping away women’s rights, as well as those of trans people and the LGBTQ+ community. They are eliminating rights, and it’s very difficult. Whenever the opportunity arises, they take something away from women. That’s why we must always stay vigilant. Look at what’s happening in Afghanistan—the Taliban took over, and within 24 hours, women lost everything, absolutely everything."

After Henry Kissinger's death in November 2023, Allende described him as a "war criminal", due to his involvement in 1973 Chilean coup d'état. She said, "He was the mastermind behind the United States’ intervention in many countries. I know more about Latin America, but not only in Latin America but also in Africa and other places where democracies were replaced by dictatorships that would bend to the will of the United States."

Allende has expressed her support for the LGBTQ people, Black Lives Matter and MeToo movement. Paula was 29 years old when she died in 1992. The foundation is "dedicated to supporting programs that promote and preserve the fundamental rights of women and children to be empowered and protected."

Personal life Allende had finished her secondary studies while living in Chile, when she met engineering student Miguel Frías whom she married in 1962. In 1978, she began a temporary separation from Frías. She lived in Spain for two months, then returned to her marriage. She divorced Frías in 1987.

During a visit to California on a book tour in 1988, Allende met her second husband, California attorney and novelist William C. "Willie" Gordon. They married in July 1988. She separated from Gordon in April 2015.

In 2019, she married for the third time, to Roger Cukras, a lawyer from New York. Allende resides in San Rafael, California. Most of her family lives nearby, with her son, his second wife, and her grandchildren just down the hill, in the house she and her second husband vacated. Malaparte Amici di Capri (Italy, 1998) Donna Citta Di Roma (Italy, 1998) Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (United States, 1998) Sara Lee Foundation (United States, 1998) Premio Iberoamericano de Letras José Donoso, University of Talca (Chile, 2003) Inaugural class of winner of the Great Immigrants Award named by Carnegie Corporation of New York (July 2006) Premio Honoris Causa, Università di Trento en "lingue e letteratura moderne euroamericane" (Trento, Italy, May 2007) Chilean National Prize for Literature (Chile, 2010) Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction (USA, 2010) Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award (Denmark, 20 12) Presidential Medal of Freedom (United States, 2014) Anisfield-Wolf Book Award: Lifetime Achievement (United States, 2017) BBC 100 Women (United Kingdom, 2018) National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (United States, 2018) Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College.

Works

Fiction The House of the Spirits (1982) La casa de los espíritus The Porcelain Fat Lady (1984) La gorda de porcelana Of Love and Shadows (1984) De amor y de sombra Eva Luna (1987) Eva Luna Two Words (1989) Dos Palabras The Stories of Eva Luna (1989) Cuentos de Eva Luna The Infinite Plan (1991) El plan infinito Daughter of Fortune (1999) Hija de la fortuna Portrait in Sepia (2000) Retrato en sepia City of the Beasts (2002) La ciudad de las bestias Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (2003) El reino del dragón de oro Forest of the Pygmies (2004) El bosque de los pigmeos Zorro (2005) El Zorro: Comienza la leyenda Ines of My Soul (2006) Inés del alma mía Island Beneath the Sea (2009) La isla bajo el mar Maya's Notebook (2011) El Cuaderno de Maya Ripper (2014) El juego de Ripper The Japanese Lover (2015) El amante japonés In the Midst of Winter (2017) Más allá del invierno A Long Petal of the Sea (2019) Largo pétalo de mar Violeta (2022) The Wind Knows My Name (2023) My Name Is Emilia del Valle (2025) Mi nombre es Emilia del Valle

Nonfiction Paula (1994) Paula Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1998) Afrodita My Invented Country: A Memoir (2003) Mi país inventado The Sum of Our Days (2007) La suma de los días The Soul of a Woman (2021) Mujeres del alma mía