Isabel Allende: "My grandfather was horrified by the fact that someone in his blood wrote about abortion, infidelity, drugs"



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Isabel Allende is one of the most important writers of Latin America.

His 22 books – among them The House of Spirits Paula and Eva Luna ] – sold over 70 million copies worldwide and translated into 42 languages.

In this interview with the BBC at his home in California, USA, Allende talks about his life, full of twists and surprises, about the untimely death of his daughter Paula and about feminism

She also spoke of her responsibility to her readers, since she is one of the most acclaimed writers of Spanish literature. Here is the main excerpt from the conversation:


BBC News World – In your memoir, My Country Invented You Say Chile Was "A Hypocritical Country", "Full of Scruples About bad and sensuality. "A person as pbadionate as you felt as something of an immobilizer?

Isabel Allende – Totally. It was terrible in Chile. In addition, I belong to a very conservative and Catholic family, so it was also in my context.

From the beginning, I could see the disadvantage of being a woman and I still am.

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BBC News World – You worked in the magazine Paula that hit Chile like a hurricane. There, they wrote about taboos, female baduality. There were a lot of things people did not talk about or did not publish.

We were young journalists who had read feminist books from the United Kingdom, the United States … we were full of ideas.

We do not care about anything.

We started publishing articles and interviews on topics unknown to Chile, such as abortion, infidelity, adultery, prostitution, drugs; things that were taboo

My grandfather was totally horrified. – But the military coup then split his family (the writer was the niece of Salvador Allende, president fallen by the blow).

BBC News World – The coup of the military state then divided his family. Isabel Allende – All divided. Everywhere Not only my family. I think all the families in Chile have had someone who has been repressed.

Separated families, couples. I went to Venezuela because it was the first time I was in Venezuela.

I left because I fell in love with an American and I arrived here before democracy in the United States

. I left because I fell in love with an American and I came here. Isabel Allende – I do not regret anything because the important events of my life have happened. 19659028 BBC News World – Do not you regret not being returned to Chile? despite me. They were not under my control: the fact that my father was gone, that I lived with my grandfather, that I was a stranger, a political refugee, that I became an immigrant … All these things have arrived, decided by destiny, karma or who you know what.

BBC News World – You say that literature has helped you break a chain of hatred in your soul. When you find yourself forced to leave a place, when you leave everything behind, when you feel that all that has been loved and lost is lost, you feel resentment, you feel that you owe something, that something you were stolen [19659002 BBC News World – Your books have been translated into 42 languages, but you still write in Spanish. Yes, the fiction I write in Spanish. The fiction happens here (showing the belly), it does not happen in the brain.

I could not therefore deal with fiction in English, with dictionaries. No.

BBC News World – We Talk About The House of Spirits which started with a letter to your grandfather. What did you want to tell him? [196459002] Isabel Allende – I remember everything that he said to me. He told me a lot of stories and I did not want him to think that they were lost. He had them all with me.

BBC News World – He died almost 100 years ago, which corresponds to the natural order of things. But the loss of his daughter Paula (victim of a rare blood disease in 1992), which was so unexpected …

Isabel Allende – When my daughter died, I lived the longest winter and

My mother said, "Something comparable will never happen, you've been through hell, so the rest of your life will be easy."

Now that she's not here, I keep writing her letters, thinking that there is wireless internet access in the next world (laughs), and I'm reading her letters one a day because she has not done it yet. I want to go crazy.

<img src = "https://media.metrolatam.com/2018/11/23/104453221a37cd0b7e35941148436c67482497465-e45faa60d06c6d3c1be16b595a3fdd35-1200×0.jpg" alt = "BBC News World – There is no woman so acclaimed in the Spanish literature that you … Do you think it generates a share of responsibility? [196459002] Isabel Allende – No more than with the first book .I have the responsibility to write from the best possible way and not to write anything that can give ideas to a psychopath

I know a lot about torture, rape Teho a foundation, I see the cases

But when I talk about Love, bad, things that I think people should know and appreciate, I am more explicit

I have responsibility Isabel Allende – I am not a person BBC News World – Are you a spiritual person

Isabel Allende – I am not a religious person But I believe that there is much more than what we can see.

I do not feel disconnected from my mother and Paula, I feel connected to any form at present.


This interview is part of the project BBC 100 Women which lists 100 inspiring women and is organized annually by the BBC.


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