With her debut novel, The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus,1982), Chilean author Isabel Allende did not only jump to the top of bestselling lists, but also made for herself a name in Latin-American as well as in world literature. With her unique blend of magical realism, following in the footpath opened by writers such as Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, she is currently one of the most interesting female voices in the Latin American literary panorama.
Born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, where her father held a diplomatic post, she moved to her parents’ native Chile at the age of three after her father abandoned the family just a few days after the birth of her …
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Citation: Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "Isabel Allende". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 December 2007; last revised 12 November 2020. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5420, accessed 08 April 2025.]
