Invented Country
A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
by Isabel Allende
List Price: $23.95
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 006054564X
Publisher: HarperCollins
Nacida en Perú, Isabel Allende se crió en Chile. Algunos de sus libros, La casa de los espíritus, De amor y sombra, Eva Luna, Cuentos de Eva Luna, El plan infinito, y más recientemente, Paula, raducidos a más de 25 lenguas, encabezan la lista de bestsellers en varios paises de America y Europa. Isabel Allende reside actualmente en California.
Born in Peru, Isabel Allende was raised in Chile. She is the author of the novels Portrait in Sepia, Daughter of Fortune, The Infinite Plan, Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, and The House of the Spirits, the short story collection The Stories of Eva Luna, the memoir Paula, and Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. City of the Beast is her first novel for young readers. She lives in California.
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Q: Margaret Sayers Peden has translated many of your works. Has any of your Spanish prose
defied translation into English?
IA: Margaret Sayers Peden has translated all my work except the first novel, The House of the Spirits that was translated by Magda Bogin. It is not particularly difficult to translate my books. They are published successfully in more than 30 languages. Sometimes, however, the job of the translator is to adapt a sentence or an idea to another culture. For example in Spanish we freely use the word "destiny" because in our culture there is fate, we don't control our lives completely. The Anglos believe they are in control, so "destiny" is too strong a word. The translation would be "luck" in most cases.
Q: You attribute your career as a novelist to the experience of fleeing Pinochet's reign. What is life like for contemporary novelists living in Chile?
IA: In Chile we have had democratic governments since 1989 when Pinochet was forced to step down. There is no censorship for books, and writers are doing very well. There is a new generation of very interesting young writers. Their lives are not easy, because very few writers can make a living in the world and especially in a small market, as Chile is, but they don't give up. Writing is a calling, not a choice.
Q: Most fiction writers draw on family events for inspiration. Is it stressful or liberating to write about your family in a memoir, without the cloak of fiction?
IA: I wrote about my family in a memoir called Paula and then again in My Invented Country. I don't find it difficult but sometimes my relatives get angry…
Q: Are any of the romantic characters in your short stories and novels representative of Chilean politics? For example, in "If You Touched My Heart" Hortensia falls in love with her brutal captor. Is this a reference to Chileans who turned a blind eye to Pinochet's torture, or did you simply intend to write a tale about love's intensity?
IA: In the short story, "If You Touched My Heart" I just wanted to tell a tale based on a case that happened in Venezuela. I try not to preach in my books, just tell the story, but inevitably the professors of literature and the critics make connections and find meaning in the text.
Q: Though 1973 was perhaps the most pivotal year in your life, the scene depicting Pinochet's rise to power does not appear until very close to the end of My Invented Country. Is this because it was an especially painful passage to write?
IA: I wrote My Invented Country without a structure in mind. Memory works in circles, in cycles, it never goes in a straight line. I didn't have an outline for this book. I let the writing wander freely. The chapter on the military coup simply came when it seemed appropriate. Those events are painful to remember, but I find it easier to write about painful things because they are very clear in my mind and my heart.
Q: Is My Invented Country meant to be a comprehensive memoir, or are there other chapters of your life that you intend to cover through non-fiction? Will your next book be nonfiction or a novel?
IA: I don't know if in the future I will have the need to write more about my life in a nonfictional form. My next book will be the last novel of a trilogy for young adults. The first is City of the Beasts, the second is The Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and the third is The Forest of the Pygmies. When I finish this book I intend to go back to fiction for adults.
Excerpted from Invented Country © Copyright 2008 by Isabel Allende. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.
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