Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s latest novel is “Violeta,” an epic tale that transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane
"Violet" by Isabel Allende. (random House)
The latest novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende is "Violet," an epic tale that transports readers through a century of South American history through economic collapse, dictatorships, and natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes.
From the aftermath of World War I to the present day, narrator Violet del Valle recounts the story of her life in an unnamed South American country with a book-length letter to her grandson Camilo.
Violet tells of living through the Spanish flu pandemic as the youngest child and only daughter in a family of five sons. After her father loses everything in the Great Depression, the family must leave their comfort in an old mansion in the nation's capital and adopt a more modest life in the country's rural south.
"Violet" recounts Allende's most famous and highly successful novel, "The House of Spirits," which weaves the personal and the political together in a saga spanning decades.
"Violet" also details the horrors of the 1970s dictatorship in South America, in which thousands of suspected political opponents were often kidnapped, tortured, and killed through Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed coalition between the region's right-wing military governments. Murder was observed.
"The government was tyrannical, but you could walk down the street and sleep peacefully at night without worrying about common criminals," Violet writes of those oppressive times.
Violet's son is a journalist who seeks exile, first in Argentina, then in Norway after learning he is on the blacklist of a dictatorship.
Violet suspects her son's father of being involved in repression through his work as a pilot. Much of the book covers Violet's long, passionate, but troubled relationship with the father of her son after a short, unsatisfactory marriage. Eventually, she finds contentment late in life with a retired diplomat and naturalist.
Considered the world's most widely read Spanish-language author, Allende is best known for her many novels, including "Eva Luna," "Of Love and Shadow" and "A Long Petal of the Sea," with Hee includes nonfiction books like "Paula". "A Memoir from 1994.
Allende left Chile for two years in exile after his father's first cousin Salvador Allende was overthrown in a 1973 coup. Isabel Allende lived in Venezuela for years before settling in the United States.