The Stories of Eva Luna
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE JAPANESE LOVER
A captivating collection of short fiction by one of the most beloved writers of our time
Eva Luna is a young woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and love. Lying in bed with her lover, European refugee and journalist Rolf Carlé, Eva answers his request for a story 'you have never told anyone before' with these twenty-three samples of her vibrant artistry. Interweaving the real and the magical, she explores love, vengeance, compassion and female power, depicting worlds that are at once poignantly familiar and intriguingly new.
Rendered in her sumptuously imagined, uniquely lyrical style, The Stories of Eva Luna is a cornerstone of Isabel Allende’s work, and in her character Eva Luna she creates a modern-day Scheherazade.
'Eva Luna's stories are delicate, their images akin to poetry . . . Perfectly crafted and thematically rich' Barbara Kingsolver
'Vital and compelling' The Times
'Arresting and altogether distinctive, powerful and haunting; a collection to be read aloud and repeated for generations' Los Angeles Times
'Enchanting, magnificent. Absolute magic on every level' Cosmopolitan
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The eponymous heroine of Eva Luna returns as the narrator of 23 tales, sumptuous marriages of Chilean writer Allende's earthy characters and her celestial version of magical realism. Although other figures from that novel also reappear (for example, Eva Luna spins her stories at the request of her lover Rolf Carle), this collection is in no sense a sequel: indeed, each piece here can stand alone. Allende's people are warm-blooded, original, memorable. A simple lyricism evokes European emigres to South America; social climbers; outlaws; schoolteachers; Indians; a nearly indefatigable imagination explores the critical moments in these figures' lives. Many of the stories build on the intricate attachments of unlikely lovers, such as a dictator and the foreign woman he abducts or a criminal and a judge's wife. Allende's inventiveness justifies her own comparisons of her literary creation to Scheherazade, and throughout all these short works whispers the mysticism of Eva Luna herself--her well-placed faith in a world of spirits and in the immortality of human love.
