50 Fun Facts About Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is a writer of which dual nationality?

She has lived in California since 1989 and became a US citizen in 1993.

Allende's debut novel The House of the Spirits was published in what year?

It began as a letter to her dying 99-year-old grandfather.

In which city was Isabel Allende born in 1942?

Her father was then second secretary at the Chilean embassy there.

How was Isabel Allende related to Chilean president Salvador Allende?

She has regularly defended his record and calls Kissinger a war criminal for the 1973 coup.

After the 1973 coup, Allende fled Chile and spent 13 years in exile in which country?

She wrote her debut novel there and worked as a columnist for El Nacional.

Which general led the 1973 coup that sent Isabel Allende into exile?

She had been helping people on the wanted lists escape until she landed on the list herself.

Which poet told the young journalist Allende she had too much imagination and should write novels?

He also advised her to collect her satirical columns in a book, which became her first published work.

Allende was fired from a job translating romance novels for doing what?

She made the heroines sound smarter and changed Cinderella endings so they found independence.

On what date does Allende traditionally begin writing each new book?

It is the date in 1981 on which she started the letter that became The House of the Spirits.

Which US president awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014?

Chile had given her its National Literature Prize four years earlier.

Allende's memoir Paula takes the form of what?

She began it as a letter so Paula would not be confused when she woke from her coma.

Which disease caused the coma from which Allende's daughter Paula never recovered?

A medication error in hospital caused the brain damage; she died in California in December 1992.

In 1996 Allende founded a foundation in her daughter's honour dedicated to the rights of whom?

Paula was 29 when she died in 1992.

Roughly how many copies have Allende's novels sold worldwide?

They have been translated into more than 42 languages.

Which family does The House of the Spirits follow across four generations?

The country is never named, but the Candidate and the Poet stand for Salvador Allende and Neruda.

In The House of the Spirits, which character has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary?

She falls mute for nine years after witnessing her sister Rosa's autopsy.

What is the name of Esteban Trueba's hacienda in The House of the Spirits?

He turns the ruined estate into a model hacienda by intimidation and reward.

Who is the foreman's son who grows up with Esteban's daughter and later loves her?

He is banished from the hacienda for spreading socialist ideas through song.

In The House of the Spirits, Esteban's sister Férula curses him to die like what?

She had grown devoted to Clara before Esteban threw her out of the big house on the corner.

After many Latin American rejections, where was The House of the Spirits first published?

It soon ran to more than two dozen Spanish editions.

The House of the Spirits is often said to be influenced by which novel?

Critics quickly compared Allende to García Márquez as a magical realist.

Who directed the 1993 film of The House of the Spirits?

It won the German Lola and Danish Robert awards but flopped in America.

Which actress played Clara in the 1993 film of The House of the Spirits?

Jeremy Irons played Esteban Trueba and Antonio Banderas played Pedro Tercero.

In the 1993 film of The House of the Spirits, who narrates the story?

The novel, by contrast, is told mainly through Esteban and Alba.

Eva Luna, the heroine of Allende's 1987 novel, is famous for what gift?

She grows up an orphan in an unnamed South American country resembling Venezuela.

Who translated Eva Luna and City of the Beasts into English?

She was Allende's longtime English translator.

In Eva Luna, how does Eva's mother Consuelo die?

Eva was conceived with a gardener who was supposedly dying of a snakebite and then recovered.

City of the Beasts, Allende's first young-adult novel, is set where?

Fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold joins his grandmother Kate on a hunt for "the Beast".

In City of the Beasts, Alexander Cold's grandmother Kate writes for which magazine?

She hates being called Grandma and leaves him to find his own way from the airport.

Which animal is revealed to be Alexander Cold's totem in City of the Beasts?

The encounter happens with a caged cat before the expedition sets off upriver.

Allende's 2005 novel Zorro tells the origin of which pulp hero?

It was the first origin story for the masked fox, drawing on the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro.

In Allende's Zorro, Diego learns fencing in Spain under which maestro?

Escalante also inducts him into La Justicia, a secret society for the marginalised.

In Allende's Zorro, what is the spirit guide of Diego's friend Bernardo?

Diego's own guide is the fox, zorro in Spanish.

Which TV host picked Daughter of Fortune for her reading list in February 2000?

Allende spent seven years researching the novel.

In Daughter of Fortune, Eliza Sommers follows her lover from Chile to where?

She hides in a ship's hold with the Chinese physician Tao Chi'en, then travels disguised as a boy.

Which novel is the sequel to Daughter of Fortune?

It follows Eliza Sommers's granddaughter.

A Long Petal of the Sea opens during which conflict?

Its refugees sail to Chile on the Winnipeg, a ship chartered by Pablo Neruda.

In A Long Petal of the Sea, which real poet charters the refugee ship Winnipeg?

Victor and Roser marry reluctantly just to qualify for passage.

The Japanese Lover is set largely in a retirement home in which city?

Alma Belasco moves into Lark House in 2015 and hires a Moldovan carer as her secretary.

In The Japanese Lover, Alma's love Ichimei Fukuda is the son of whom?

Eight-year-old Alma was sent from Poland to San Francisco in 1939 to escape the Holocaust.

Inés of My Soul narrates the life of Inés Suárez and her role in founding which city?

She tells her story to her adoptive daughter and recounts her bond with Pedro de Valdivia.

Violeta, Allende's 2022 novel, spans how many years of its heroine's life?

Violeta is born during the 1920 flu and writes her story as a letter during the 2020 pandemic.

Who starred opposite Jennifer Connelly in the 1994 film Of Love and Shadows?

He plays a photographer who opens a magazine editor's eyes to the regime's crimes.

Allende was one of eight flag bearers at the opening ceremony of which Olympics?

The next year she gave the TED talk Tales of Passion.

Which Chilean writer called Allende "a writing machine, not a writer"?

She says Chilean intellectuals "detest" her and resents being judged on sales.

Before writing books, Allende worked for which United Nations agency?

She was in Santiago, then Brussels and elsewhere in Europe from 1959 to 1965.

Allende edited which Chilean children's magazine from 1969 to 1974?

She was also on the editorial staff of the feminist magazine Paula from 1967.

Allende's second husband, whom she married in 1988, was a California lawyer and novelist named what?

They met on a book tour and separated in 2015; she married Roger Cukras in 2019.

As a child in the 1950s, Allende attended schools in La Paz and which Middle Eastern city?

Her stepfather Ramón Huidobro was a diplomat posted to Bolivia and Lebanon.

Which Allende novel alternates between Berkeley, California, and the Chilean island of Chiloé?

It appeared in 2011 and also detours to Las Vegas.