Daughter of Fortune
by Isabel Allende

List Price: $14.00
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060932759
Publisher: Harper Perennial

Isabel Allende is one of Latin America's most celebrated writers, the author of five novels, a collection of short stories, and two memoirs. The niece of Chile's former president, Salvador Allende, she was born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, but traveled extensively throughout her youth. Eventually settling in Santiago, Chile, she worked with the United Nations before embarking on a career in journalism. For many years Allende conducted interviews on Chilean television, produced newsreels, worked on a radical feminist magazine, and wrote plays and stories. On September 11, 1973, her peaceful world came to an end when her uncle was killed in a violent military coup. Forced into exile, Isabel fled to Venezuela, where she began her first novel, The House of the Spirits, as a letter to her grandfather. It was published in 1985 to wide acclaim and was followed by Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, The Stories of Eva Luna, and The Infinite Plan - all works of fiction. In 1992, Allende wrote Paula, a memoir addressed to her daughter, who died in her late twenties. It was followed by Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. Isabel Allende currently lives in northern California, a region whose breathtaking landscapes she lovingly evokes in Daughter of Fortune, her fifth novel.

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