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Isabel Allende\\u2019s first novel, \\u201cThe House of the Spirits\\u201d catapulted her to literary stardom, and was acclaimed as a classic of Latin American magic realism. That was nearly forty years ago and she\\u2019s not stopped writing since: with twenty novels and four volumes of memoir, she\\u2019s been translated all over the world and has sold some seventy-four million books. They\\u2019re vivid family sagas, with eccentric characters, dramatic reversals, discoveries of lost children, violent death, disease and revolution, and sudden consuming love affairs.
But Isabel Allende\\u2019s own life is as extraordinary as any of her novels. Abandoned by her father as a small child, she spent her early years travelling across South America with her stepfather, who was a diplomat. He was the cousin of Salvador Allende, Chile\\u2019s socialist leader, who became Isabel\\u2019s godfather. But when Allende was deposed by the right-wing government of General Pinochet in 1973, Isabel \\u2013 by then married, with children \\u2013 became caught up in the violent revolution and had to flee the country. She now lives with her third husband in California.
In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Isabel Allende reflects on her extraordinary life, and reveals how she has found happiness now in her seventies. Music choices include Vivaldi, Mozart\\u2019s Flute Concerto No. 1, Albinoni, the Chilean singer Victor Jara, a moving song from the Spanish Civil War, and a Mexican love song from the 1940s, \\u201cKiss Me Lots\\u201d.
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3\\nProduced by Elizabeth Burke\\n
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