My Invented Country
A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A highly personal memoir of exile and homeland by bestselling author Isabel Allende
In My Invented Country Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country, a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today.
The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author’s past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Isabel Allende’s gorgeously contemplative memoir is full of as much beauty and magic as her celebrated novels. After her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende, was assassinated in 1973, the author, then 31, fled her home country. Still, Chile’s stark beauty and unbreakable people never left her mind. We were enchanted to discover how much of Allende’s masterful novel House of the Spirits was inspired by her mother’s childhood memories, or how her fun-loving, gossipy, and wildly idiosyncratic extended family became her idea of the very soul of Chile. In her trademark dreamlike style, Allende jumps back and forth in time and place, moving between Chile’s defining 1880s War of the Pacific, her own 1940s childhood in cosmopolitan Santiago, and her present-day life in California. Sumptuous and thoughtful, My Invented Country is an unforgettable journey of the spirit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Allende's novels The House of the Spirits; Eva Luna; Daughter of Fortune; etc. are of the sweeping epic variety, often historical and romantic, weaving in elements of North and South American culture. As with most fiction writers, Allende's work is inspired by personal experiences, and in this memoir-cum-study of her "home ground," the author delves into the history, social mores and idiosyncrasies of Chile, where she was raised, showing, in the process, how that land has served as her muse. Allende was born in Peru in 1942, but spent much of her childhood and a significant portion of her adulthood in Santiago (she now lives in California). She ruminates on Chilean women (their "attraction lies in a blend of strength and flirtatiousness that few men can resist"); the country's class system ("our society is like a phyllo pastry, a thousand layers, each person in his place"); and Chile's turbulent history ("the political pendulum has swung from one extreme to another; we have tested every system of government that exists, and we have suffered the consequences"). She readily admits her view is subjective to be sure, she is not the average Chilean (her stepfather was a diplomat; her uncle, Salvador Allende, was Chile's president from 1970 until his assassination in 1973). And at times, her assessments transcend Chile, especially when it comes to comments on memory and nostalgia. This is a reflective book, lacking the pull of Allende's fiction but unearthing intriguing elements of the author's captivating history.
