An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky, translated from German by Jackie Smith and published by MacLehose Press, has been announced as the 2021 winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.An Inventory of Losses, first published in Germa
‘The Soul of a Woman’: Isabel Allende mediates on feminism, inequality, aging and love By Serena Chang | 08 March, 2021
Isabel Allende was born in Peru and raised in Chile. She now lives in California. Following a career in journalism and exile in Venezuela, she published her widely acclaimed novel
The House of Spirits in 1982, which paved the way for her to achieve literary stardom. Many of her bestselling novels are centred around the extraordinary lives and experiences of her female protagonists. Her work has been translated into over 42 languages, and she has been described as the world’s most widely-read Spanish language author.
Bloomsbury, £8.99, pp336
Spanning 60 years and two continents, Allendeâs latest novel follows two young Spanish republicans â Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera â from the Spanish civil war, through French detention camps and finally to Chile and Venezuela. Roserâs son is the child of Victorâs brother, Guillem, killed in the war, and when Victor decides to take care of them, what begins as a practical arrangement gradually develops into a tender, lasting commitment to each other. Allende examines themes of cultural dislocation and the impact of political upheaval on quotidian lives in an engrossing and vivid novel. To order
From 1939 Spain to 1973 Chile
By Sally Bland - Jan 03,2021 - Last updated at Jan 03,2021
A Long Petal of the Sea
Isabel Allende
New York: Ballantine Books, 2020
Pp. 318
In her latest novel, Isabel Allende pays tribute to Chile’s beloved communist poet, Pablo Neruda, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, and died in September 1973, as Augusta Pinochet’s military regime came to power. (Until today, suspicions linger that Pinochet’s agents poisoned him.) Each chapter of “A Long Petal of the Sea” is graced by excerpts of his poems. It is obvious why Allende singled him out, for Neruda’s poetry elegantly and forcefully extolls both love and social justice themes that are implicit in Allende’s own books. Other writers and artists Spanish as well as Chilean are mentioned in the narrative, attesting to Allende’s conviction in the importance of culture for countering war, dictatorship and displacement.