Chilean Writer Isabel Alllende on Her Memoir, Her Family, Michelle Bachelet, Torture and Immigration

Isabel Allende was born in Peru in 1942 and traveled the world as the daughter of a prominent Chilean family. Her father was the Chilean ambassador to Peru and her uncle was Salvador Allende, Chile’s President between 1970 and 1973. He died on another September 11th, that’s September 11th 1973, when Augusto Pinochet seized power in a CIA-backed military coup. Isabel Allende’s family then fled to Venezuela where she continued to work as a journalist.

Her debut novel in 1982, “The House of the Spirits,” chronicled four generations of a Chilean family through the tumult of that country’s political history. It is a history that is intertwined with Allende’s own. Allende"s latest book, her sixteenth, is a memoir titled “The Sum of Our Days.” It continues from where her most famous novel “Paula” left off.

Isabel Allende us in our firehouse studio.

Isabel Allende, Bestselling Chilean novelist. Her latest book, her sixteenth, is a memoir titled, “The Sum of Our Days.”

Related Democracy Now! Stories

• Acclaimed Chilean Novelist Isabel Allende on Michele Bachelet, Immigration and Chile as a “Country of Poets” (11/17/2006)
• Acclaimed Author Isabel Allende Compares Two September 11ths: the 1973 CIA-Backed Coup that Overthrew her Uncle, the Democratically Elected President of Chile, and the 2001 Attacks (6/5/2003)