Synopses & Reviews
Isabel Allende transports us to a Latin American country in the grip of a military dictatorship, where Irene Beltran, an upperclass journalist, and Francisco Leal, a photographer son of a Marxist professor together discover a hideous crime. They also discover how far they dare go in search of the truth in a nation of terror . . . and how very much they risk.
Review
"Isabel Allende's first novel, The House of the Spirits, was warmly received by critics around the world, and won her instant fame as a writer. Her second novel, De Amor y de Sombra, was first published in Spain in 1984, and is now effectively translated into English by Margaret Sayers Peden. As a Chilean by birth, Allende knows what she is writing about when she sets her novel in an unnamed Latin American military dictatorship. Into this setting, she introduces a pair of lovers, the woman from an upper-class family, the man a freedom fighter. The politics of the novel may be predictable, but the story has the kind of raw emotional power characteristic of Latin American fiction." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
About the Author
Born in Peru,
Isabel Allende is Chilean. She was a journalist for many years and began to write fiction in 1981. The result was the worldwide bestseller
The House of the Spirits, which was followed two years later by the equally successful
Of Love and Shadows. Long a resident of Caracas, she now makes her home in San Rafael, California, where she is completing a new book.
From the Trade Paperback edition.