Of Love & Shadows

‘I said, “I’m in my 70s. What are your intentions?” he literally choked on his ravioli’ – Isabel Allende on finding love later in life.

- Helena De Bertodano

On the day I meet Isabel Allende, violence is escalating on the streets of Chile, her home country. I arrive at her office in Sausalito, northern California, to find her and her son, Nicolas Frias, fulminating about the stupidity of the government in handling the mass protests for social reform. ‘They don’t get it,’ Allende exclaims, pacing around the room holding a cup of steaming tea, which is jumping out at the rim as she gesticulates furiously. ‘They are waiting for people to get tired. But people don’t get tired; they get more enraged.’

A tiny 1.5m powerhouse of fury, Allende (78) is a force to be reckoned with. As the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author, her 24 books, including the international bestseller The House of the Spirits, have been translated into 42 languages, with more than 74 million copies sold worldwide. Her latest novel, A Long Petal of the Sea, is about the troubled Chile of yesteryear, but she could almost be writing about Chile today. In the book she quotes the poet and politician Pablo Neruda, ‘In the middle of the night I ask myself: what will happen to Chile, what will become of my poor, dark country?’