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It has all the ingredients of a bestseller: a feminine epic, reflections on freedom, the historical fresco of a century that passes between two epidemics, love, political struggle and a feat for civil rights. This is the new novel by Isabel Allende, ‘Violeta’, which arrives in bookstores tomorrow, published in Spanish by Plaza & Janés, and in English by the Ballantine label.
The most widely read living author in Spanish in the world, with 75 million copies sold in 42 languages, presents on this occasion the story of a woman whose life begins and ends with a pandemic: Violeta was born in 1920, during the Spanish flu, and died in 2020, in the midst of a wave of coronavirus. Isolated by the contagion, Violeta tells
his life to his grandson, while describing the years of a convulsed and agitated world. Halfway between the diary and the epistolary genre, Allende insists that this story is sustained by “human relations.”
“I started writing this novel on January 8, 2020. When that happened, I thought it would be poetic to place the story between the two pandemics. Now that we live under Covid-19, we can easily imagine what the influenza pandemic was like a century ago, ”says the Chilean author in the virtual presentation of a novel that crosses the 20th century, one of the most convulsive centuries.
Throughout the pages of this novel, Violeta, its protagonist, recalls love disappointments and passionate romances, moments of poverty and also of prosperity, duels and joys of a life shaped by the great events of history: from the crash of 29 to the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants from Latin American dictatorships and, ultimately, not one, but two pandemics that situate Violeta’s intense life.
Isabel Allende turns 80 this summer and celebrates forty since she published her first novel, ‘The House of the Spirits’. ‘Violeta’, his twenty-sixth book, serves as a balance and journey, even an autobiographical exercise. The woman who tells the story of the last hundred years stars in episodes in which clear echoes of the life of Isabel Allende herself can be seen, who denies that it is entirely autobiographical.
Real facts
“There are things of my mother in this book. Violeta’s voice is the ironic and intelligent voice of my mother. There are my things, of course. There are aspects of my life in the novel, but it is because of the time and place that Violeta and I share: the 20th century in Latin America,” she explains. ‘Violeta’ is a novel inspired by real events and characters, although the action does not have a specific location. “At no time is Chile mentioned. I preferred it that way. It gives me more freedom. I did the same thing in ‘The House of the Spirits’. These stories could have happened in almost any country in Latin America, which have a lot in common and a very similar history. When asked about a society that retreats in the face of the advance of the disease and in which polarization dominates any political and cultural debate, the writer avoids giving a pessimistic reading: «No past time was better. The world evolves and advances. There is a young generation that no longer believes in institutions, that is at the top of the situation of the planet and of patriarchal society.
Convinced that her literary commitment is inseparable from justice, equality and inclusion, she considers her work as a feminist an essential part of her novels, as well as in the foundation she directs. “I have followed the stages of feminism very closely and I am delighted with this wave of young women who do things. That is incorporated into what I write and in my own life. In these 40 years I have not been stuck in a single idea of women.
Boric’s chili
The current situation in Chile is the best example of progress, he states emphatically. «I like the changes of this new government of my country. The defense minister is Allende’s granddaughter, and she will have to come to terms with the armed forces, and let’s not forget the role they have played in Chile’s history. I am delighted with Boric’s cabinet: there are 14 women. It is time for the old geezers in Chile to go home.
Reluctant to rewrite history or tear down statues, he insists that “cancellation or censorship” makes no sense. That is why he flatly rejects the fact that Pablo Neruda should be stopped reading or disowned because of the rape episode that the Nobel Prize for Literature himself described in his memoirs: “You have to separate the man from the work.”