a long petal of the sea by isabel allende

Should writers be political? And frankly in today’s times all over the world, do they even have a choice?

Maybe during the military coup in Chile in l973, it was liability, but it never crossed my mind to change it or to use my husband’s name. Writing Paula, the memoir about my daughter, was painful but necessary because it helped me to understand what had happened during that terrible year of her illness and accept that her only way out from the prison of her inert body was death. I’ll never have that confidence and innocence again. I had never read a book review or taken a writing class, I had no idea that the book industry was almost a minefield. I wrote my first book, The House of the Spirits, with ease, quickly, without planning it or even realising that it was a novel, I thought it was a chronicle or a memoir. How difficult was it to write these deeply personal books? In the first, you wrote letters to your deceased grandfather, and, in the other, you dwelt on the loss of your daughter. Two of your finest works include your debut novel - The House of the Spirits (1982) and your non-fiction tribute to your daughter, Paula (1994). It is about the brutal reality of slavery but it is also a magic story. I recently read a novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dance (2019). That always has a place in the world, not only in Latin America, not only in the past. Our job is to dwell on the unknown and try to interpret it. Does it still remain a special device that can be made effective in today’s times? Or do we need more realism now and less magic?Īrtists and writers accept that the world is a mysterious place, we don’t have explanations for everything, we control very little. Contrary to the idea that magic realism is a Latin American genre, you have always maintained that elements of it are found in literature from all over the world.

A long petal of the sea by isabel allende