Isabel Allende is the best-known and most widely read woman writer from Latin America. When the English translation of her widely acclaimed first novel, La casa de los espíritus (1982), appeared in 1985 under the title The House of the Spirits, she became an immediate international success. Since then, she has published three more novels and a book of short stories, all of which have been translated into several languages and many of which have been best-sellers in the countries where they are available. Allende is the first Latin-American woman writer to share in the worldwide fame and critical success of her male counterparts, popularized in the 1960s as representatives of the Latin-American literary Boom.

Allende was born in Lima, Peru, on 2 August 1942 to Chilean diplomat Tomás Allende and his wife Francisca Llona Barros. Her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, president of Chile...