Isabel Allende, (born August 2, 1942, Lima, Peru) is a Chilean-American writer and considered one of the first successful woman novelists from Latin America.

Allende was born in Peru to Chilean parents and worked as a journalist in Chile until she was forced to flee to Venezuela after the assassination of her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende. In 1981 she began writing a letter to her terminally ill grandfather, a letter that became her first novel, La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits). It was followed by the novels De amor y de sombra (Of Love and Shadows), Eva Luna (1987), and El plan infinito (The Infinite Plan) and the collection of stories Cuentos de Eva Luna (The Stories of Eva Luna). Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Allende also wrote in the genre of magic realism. Many of her works focused on the portrayal of South American politics, and her first four works reflect her own experiences and examine the role of women in Latin America. The Infinite Plan, however, is set in the United States with a male protagonist. Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica

For more information on Isabel Allende please visit her page at the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and visit the GHC Library or your local library for any of her works.