SOURCE: Allende, Isabel with John Brosnahan. “Transforming Stories, Writing Reality.” In Conversations with Isabel Allende, edited by John Rodden, pp. 159-65. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

In the following interview, originally published in 1991, Allende considers the relationship between her novel Eva Luna and her story volume The Stories of Eva Luna.

Isabel Allende's novel The House of the Spirits—a family chronicle that revealed generational and political forces in conflict—introduced a new and vibrant voice from Latin America. Allende knew her subject firsthand from growing up in Chile and from witnessing the 1973 military coup that resulted in the assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende, the country's president. The end of democratic rule ultimately forced Allende and her family into exile in Venezuela, where she began her career as a writer in 1981. Two other novels, Of Love and Shadows and Eva Luna, followed in 1987 and 1988. Allende's latest book...