In the hands of an author like Isabel Allende, history achieves this work of approaching a past full of teachings. Whether these teachings are worth us or not, because in repeating mistakes we are recalcitrantly efficient. Oh well…
Something similar occurs with any narrator of historical fiction. Because many readers know or know of past times thanks to writers who relate their intrahistories after having been rigorously documented. It can be said that history comes chewed with these feathers so that learning History is living it.
Ever since he puzzled everyone with that first novel "The House of Spirits", turned into a meticulous microcosm charged with raging life, we know that in the hands of Isabel Allende peering into that yesterday that is taking on remote historical appearances is like going into old sepia photos. Snapshots viewed with a strange nostalgia for what was not experienced by us but by our parents or grandparents ...
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first child in a family of five boisterous siblings. From the beginning his life will be marked by extraordinary events, as the shock waves of the Great War are still felt when the Spanish flu reaches the shores of his native South American country, almost at the exact moment of his birth.
Thanks to the clairvoyance of the father, the family will emerge unscathed from this crisis to face a new one, when the Great Depression disrupts the elegant urban life that Violeta has known until now. His family will lose everything and will be forced to retire to a wild and remote part of the country. There Violeta will come of age and will have her first suitor ...
In a letter addressed to a person whom she loves above all others, Violeta recalls devastating love disappointments and passionate romances, moments of poverty as well as prosperity, terrible losses and immense joys. Some of the great events in history will shape her life: the struggle for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics.
Seen through the eyes of a woman with unforgettable passion, determination and humor that sustains her through a turbulent life, Isabel Allende gives us, once again, a furiously inspiring and deeply emotional epic tale.
You can now buy the novel «Violeta», by Isabel Allende, here:
