Isabel Allende is a Chilean author and journalist who was born in Peru in the 1940s. She is best known for her novels The House of the Spirits, her first novel, and City of the Beasts. Her father was a diplomat who deserted his family when Allende was just two years old. She and her family moved in with her maternal grandfather, and Allende became a rebellious child from a young age. Allende saw as a child that her mother was restricted as a woman while her grandfather had privilege, power, and money. She began to recognize and rebel against male authority. Allende lived through regime change in Chile when General Pinochet rose to power as a dictator. She fled to Venezuela.
In 1981,...
