Lying in bed with her European lover, refugee and journalist Rolf Carle, Eva answers hes request for a story "you have never told anyone before" with these twenty-three samples of her vibrant artistry. Interweaving the real and the magical, she explores love, vengeance, compassion, and the strenghts of women, creating a world that is at once poingnantly familiar and intriguingly new.

Rendered in the sumptuously imagined, uniquely magical style of one of the world's most stunning writers, The Stories of Eva Luna is the conerstone of Allende's work. It is not to be missed by anyone — whether a devotee of Ms. Allende's oeuvre or a new acquaintance to her work.

Isabel Allende always revives one's faith in the intoxicating power of sheer old-fashioned storytelling.

The Washington Post

Allende is a real talent, an amazingly prolific one. In her stories there are palpable life and death risks, the risks of passionate love, the risks of passionate belief, of convictions and honor.

Gratifyingly ambitious...truly captivating...There is a richness in this book — and it is, in its finest moments, a richness not only of language but of life.

Full of grace and passion...love and revenge...enchanting...One could go on reading her stories forever.

The Toronto Star

The fabulous scale of narrative, the characters as darkly pungent as coffee tinged with blood, charge her stories with a physicality and power that will leave the readers checking for bruises on their thighs.

The Calgary Herald

The stories are like opulent parables...I, for one, sense I will be going back to this book again and again just to be with them.

An extraordinary fictional potion.

QuillandQuire

What is most admirable about this collection is Allende's ability to portray a world in which the ordinary and the miraculous, the natural and the supernatural, the political and the particular not only co-exist but actually affect one another.