The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

Black Swan, 1995 reprint (1985), paperback, 491 pp. plus 5 pp. adverts

Condition: fair only - a well read copy, binding firm, paper toned with age, covers very worn and creased.

The author's first work.

In 1977, while in Caracas, Allende received a phone call informing her that her 99-year-old grandfather was near death, and she sat down to write him a letter, hoping to thereby "keep him alive, at least in spirit." The letter evolved into a book,  (1982); this work intended to exorcise the ghosts of the Pinochet dictatorship. The book was rejected by numerous Latin American publishers, but eventually published in Buenos Aires. The book soon ran to more than two dozen editions in Spanish and was translated into a score of languages. Allende was compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez as an author in the style known as magical realism. [source: Wikipedia]