IN CONVERSATION WITH Isabel ALLENDE

Multimillion-selling author Isabel Allende talks about feminism, clairvoyancy and happy endings

‘My first novel, The House of the Spirits, was an exercise in nostalgia’

Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the world’s most widely read Spanishlanguage author. Her books have sold more than 74 million copies worldwide, including

The House of the Spirits and A Long Petal of the Sea. Her latest book is a feminist memoir, The Soul of a Woman. Isabel lives in California with her husband and two dogs.

I began writing as a journalist for a controversial magazine called Paula in Chile in the late 60s. We discussed essential topics for women that no other publication would touch upon – our bodies, domestic violence, abortion, divorce – you name it. We got a lot of aggression from conservative politicians and from Chilean society in general. Many people were shocked. But we got a fantastic reaction from women and it became the most popular magazine in the country. In the six years that Paula existed, I think it changed Chile’s culture.

My grandfather was a huge presence in my life.

He was a good man, but very patriarchal. He mellowed out eventually. I remember I wrote a play that had the whole audience shouting and cursing – it was full of bad words. My grandfather went to see it secretly, and he loved it. He went back countless times. It was so liberating for him. He would never admit he had seen it.

I lived in exile in Venezuela after Chile’s military coup in 1973. My grandfather was dying in Chile and I couldn’t see him, so I started writing him a letter. It grew and grew, and a few pages in, I knew it wasn’t a letter any more. That was how I wrote The House of the Spirits, my

an exercise in nostalgia, to recover everything that I had lost. My family and friends, my country, the past – everything that was shattered during the coup.

As a writer, in every one of my books I look for the voices of those who have been silenced. It’s the marginalised >>

people who tell a story that is not

When writing my new book, The Soul of a Woman, my life as a woman, as a feminist, and I created something between an essay and a memoir. I felt the presence of the extraordinary women we help at my foundation, who have lost everything