The House of The Spirits Allende

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Ministry of
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THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS
ISABEL ALLENDE
HUELVA Public Library

Avda. Martín Alonso Pinzón, 16 ·
Web Publication date:
21003 Huelva
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BIOGRAPHY
Ministry of
Culture
He was born in Lima while his father served as Chile's

ambassador to Peru. Her parents separated in 1945, and her
mother returned to Chile with her and her two brothers, where
she lived until 1953. Between 1953 and 1958, his family lived
successively in Bolivia and Beirut (Lebanon). In Bolivia he
attended an American school and in Beirut he studied at a
private English normal school. In 1958 he returned to Chile and met again with
Miguel Frías, whom she married in 1962. From 1959 to 1965 he worked at the Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in Santiago, Chile. In
1963 his daughter Paula was born. The following years he spent long periods in
Europe, residing especially in Brussels and Switzerland. Upon returning to Chile in
1966, his son Nicolás was born.
Starting in 1967, he took part in the writing of the magazine Paula , while publishing
a large number of articles on various topics. Later he made various collaborations
for the children's magazine Mampato and published two stories for children ( La
granca Panchita and Lauchas y lauchones ) and a collection of articles titled
Civilice a su troglodita ; He also worked on two Chilean television channels. In
1973 he premiered his play The Ambassador . That same year, the coup d'état led
by General Pinochet took place, in which Salvador Allende (Isabel's uncle)
committed suicide. In 1975 he went into self-exile with his family in Venezuela. In
the 13 years that he remained there, he worked at the Caracas newspaper El
Nacional and at a secondary school until 1982, and published his first play, The
House of Seven Mirrors (1975).
In 1981, when his grandfather was 99 years old and he himself was at death's door,
he began to write him a letter that became a manuscript: The House of the
Spirits (1982), his first novel and his best-known work. This aroused great interest
and was later adapted to film (by Bille August) and theater.
In 1984, he published Of love and shadow , which quickly became another great
success and was also made into a film. The constant trips he undertook promoting
his books caused his marriage to Frías to come to an end. Divorced from her
husband, she married Willie Gordon on July 7, 1988 in San Francisco. In 1988, he
went to vote in the plebiscite that made Pinochet resign.

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In 1990, with the return of democracy in Chile, she was awarded the
Gabriela Mistral Order of Teaching and Cultural Merit by President Patricio Aylwin.
Ministry of
Culture
In 1992, Paula, his 28-year-old daughter, died due to porphyria. The painful
experience drives her to write Paula , an autobiographical epistolary book where
she tells what her childhood and youth were like until reaching the time of exile.
He currently resides in San Rafael, (California). She has been honored by the United
States Academy of Arts and Letters and her motto is: "Let your imagination fly and
write what is necessary."
SOME OF HIS WORKS
The House of the Spirits (1982)
It is the saga of a powerful family of Latin American landowners, first in its splendor
and then in the years of tribulation and decline. The trajectory of the various
characters, whose adventures span almost a century, ends up configuring a kind of
parable that transcends the geographical framework where the action takes place,
prefiguring the collective destiny of Latin America.
The Porcelain Fat Lady (1984)
A delicious children's story in which, in fact, she is fat and made of

porcelain, and will have a devastating (although ultimately beneficial)
effect on the sad clerk of a notary when he sees her in the window of
an antique shop. It is accompanied by illustrations, no less delicious
than the text, by the cartoonist Fernando Krahn.
Of love and shadow (1984)
In the author's own words, "it is the story of a woman and a man who loved each
other fully, thus saving themselves from a vulgar story. I have carried it in my
memory, taking care of it so that time does not wear it down, and it is only now that
I can finally tell it. I will do it for them and for others who entrusted me with their
lives so that the wind does not erase them..." Written during her exile in Venezuela,
the love between Irene and Francisco is a passionate plea for faith in human
freedom and dignity.

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Eva Luna (1987)
Written in the style of a picaresque novel, the life of the girl Eva
Ministry of
Culture
Luna, sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, is a story pregnant with

other stories embodied in a succession of tender characters (an
embalmer of corpses), disturbing (a woman who survives his own
decapitation) or grotesques (a woman with a man's body). But above
all it is an exciting display of imagination and narrative capacity.
Tales of Eva Luna (1989)
Eva Luna was a cascade of stories told through other stories. But the flow was far
from exhausted. In bed with her lover, Eva Luna is asked by him to tell him a story
"that she has never told before." And the improvised Shéhérezade tells not one but
23 lives in which love, hate, revenge, the grotesque and the sublime overlap and
push each other in their eagerness to complete the entire register of possible
feelings in the human soul.
The Infinite Plan (1991)
Gregory Reeves is a "gringo" who seems to navigate the sea of marginalization of

the "Hispanics" of California. From his father, a doctor in natural sciences who
during World War II traveled throughout North America aboard a truck, he has
inherited that "infinite plan" that he turns into a personal search through poverty,
political activism, revolution. sexuality and the tearing of the Vietnam War, all of this
inscribed in a harmonious story with great plot intensity.
Paula (1994)
It should have been a song of pain for his daughter Paula, who died at the age of 28
in tragic circumstances. Sitting at the foot of the bed where her daughter lies,
immersed in a very long coma that ultimately proved irreversible, the first intention
of this book was to preserve the common memory. "What will you be like when you
wake up? Will you have a memory or will I have to patiently tell you about the
twenty-eight years of your life and the forty-nine years of mine?"


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exorcism against death, to which little by little the remaining members of the family clan and
the historical and personal circumstances of each of them are added, until configuring a
passionate song to life.
Aphrodite (1997)
The devastating experience of watching her daughter PAULA , in a coma for almost a year, led
Isabel Allende to withdraw into herself, alone with the pain. But, suddenly, one night he
dreamed that he was jumping into a pool full of sauce. Then he understood that the duel was
over. Taking appetite and sex as its teachings, this book is a light-hearted compilation of
advice for retaining a lover and a very personal ode to sensuality.
Fortune's Daughter (1999)
Eliza Sommers is a young Chilean who lives in Valparaíso in 1894, the

year gold is discovered in California. Her lover, Joaquín Andieta, leaves
for the north determined to find fortune, and she decides to follow him.
The infernal journey, hidden in the cove of a sailboat, and the search for
her lover in a land of lonely men and prostitutes attracted by the gold
fever, transform the innocent young woman into an unusual woman.
Portrait in sepia (2000)
A journey through the history of Chile during the second half of the 19th century through an
emblematic woman, Aurora del Valle, granddaughter of Eliza Sommers and Tao Chien
(protagonists of her previous novel).
City of Beasts (2002)
Alexander Cold is a 15-year-old American boy whom his parents decide to send to New York to
live with his grandmother Kate while his mother, sick with cancer, undergoes treatment.
Although at first Alex finds the idea horrible, when he arrives in New York he finds out that his
grandmother, an intrepid writer who works for a travel magazine, has a surprise prepared for
him: they will travel together to the Amazon jungle.


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Zorro: The Legend Begins (2005)
This is the story of Diego de la Vega and how he became the legendary Zorro. Finally I can
reveal his identity, which we kept secret for so many years..." Isabel Allende rescues the
figure of the hero and, with irony and humanity, gives him life beyond the legend.
Inés of my soul (2006)
Inés Suárez is a young and humble seamstress from Extremadura

who sets sail for the New World to look for her husband, lost with
his dreams of glory on the other side of the Atlantic. She also longs
to live a life of adventure, forbidden to women in the modest
society of the 16th century. In America, Inés does not find her
husband, but she does find a passionate love: Pedro de Valdivia, field master of Francisco
Pizarro, with whom Inés faces the risks and uncertainties of the conquest and founding of the
kingdom of Chile.
The sum of the days (2007)
Isabel Allende tells her daughter Paula everything that has happened to the family since the
moment she died. The reader experiences, together with the author, the personal
improvement of a woman with inspiring strength, always surrounded by friends and family. Its
story is emotional, but it is also full of humor, colorful characters and chaotic and funny
anecdotes about complicity, love, hope, magic and the strength of friendship.
The Island Under the Sea (2009)
The eventful story of a slave in 18th century Santo Domingo who will
manage to free herself from the stigmas that society has imposed on
her to achieve freedom and, with it, happiness. The Island Under the
Sea tells the life of Zarité, a mulatto who at the age of 9 is sold as a
slave to the Frenchman Toulouse Valmorain, owner of one of the most
important sugar plantations in Santo Domingo.

Avda. Martín Alonso Pinzón, 16 · 21003 Huelva Web address :
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STYLE
Ministry of
Culture
On a literary level, she confesses that when she begins to write she generates a place,
a time and the characters and the story happen on their own, that is, she does not have an
initial plan with all the actions. Several of his books have been born from letters or personal
reflections; The house of the spirits and Paula are examples of this. Paula composed it as
a tribute to her daughter and, although many scholars classify the work in the
autobiographical genre, she herself indicates that it is more like a "memoir" because it is not a
biography itself but a collection of memories closer to fiction than to reality, although the
latter inspired it.
Humor is an integral part of his writings, whether journalistic or literary works. He confesses
that he got used to writing this way when he was a journalist and now, thanks to that, he can
see the story "behind" each issue, an alternative vision.
The city of beasts is his attempt to reach the young reading public. He decided to write it
after two books with a lot of historical research; This new book would give him a break and in
it he could express his imagination in a more free way, since historical fiction always requires
great care to stick to the events that happened. When he was a journalist, others were his
story; She had the right to ring the doorbell of a house, go inside and ask questions or stop a
stranger in the middle of the street and question him about personal things (thoughts).
His work has been classified in the literary movement known as Post-Boom, although some
scholars prefer the term "New Literature." This movement is characterized by the return to
realism, a prose that is easier to read since the concern for creating new ways of writing
(meta-literature), the emphasis on history, local culture, among others, is lost.
Although her best-sellers are overwhelming, there are critics and writers who have been
implacable with her, considering her a writer of subliterature or merely commercial literature
or, at best, as a minor copy of Gabriel García Márquez. The American Harold Bloom stated that
"Isabel Allende is a very bad writer and only reflects a certain period."

The Mexican Elena Poniatowska put her in the same bag with Ángeles Mastretta and
Laura Esquivel and said that the three "enter literature as commercial phenomena and create
women's literature ." Her compatriot Roberto Bolaño said: "She seems to me to be a bad
writer, plain and simple, and to call her a writer is to give her credit. "I don't even think Isabel
Allende is a writer, she is a writer." Finally, Angélica
Web Gorodischer pointed out
Publication date:that Allende's
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novels only feed outdated female stereotypes, but do not contribute anything at the level of
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literature or gender.
THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende's first novel, narrates the life of the Trueba family, the
eccentric family life, especially focused on Clara, a distracted woman with clairvoyant skills.
3
LACaéaD[
The novel begins with an introduction to the del Valle family and
Esteban Trueba, who goes to the northern mines to quickly gain wealth so he can marry Rosa,
the eldest daughter of those from the Valley. However, at the same time, Esteban receives a
letter informing him of Rosa's death caused by ingesting burning water originally intended for
his father, a liberal politician. Upon receiving the news, Esteban decides to go to the farm that
his father had left him as an inheritance. Upon arrival he finds families in extreme poverty.
With an iron fist and hard work, Esteban manages to get the farm back on its feet, buys
neighboring farms and manages to amass great wealth. But after a few years, Esteban has to
travel to the city because his mother had become very sick, so he decides to marry the
youngest daughter of those from the Valley, Clara.
Clara was a clairvoyant girl with powers, in addition to seeing the future, seeing and speaking
with spirits and using telekinesis. As the story continues, Clara and Esteban have a daughter,
Blanca, and two sons, Jaime and Nicolás, who are sent to an English school.
Blanca, from the first trip to Tres Marías (her father's farm), falls in love with a local boy.
Years pass and the boy becomes a pro-communist, preaching ideas of communism that
existed in Europe, in order to show the people who worked in the countryside that it is
possible to organize to achieve change.


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Esteban kicks him out of the farm, threatening to kill him if he sees him
again, but Blanca, during her stay at Tres Marías, continues to see him every night,
secretly from her father.
Blanca ends up having a son with him and her father forces her to marry a French count, Jean
de Satigny, so that she does not have a bastard son. But some time after getting married,
Blanca realizes that her husband has a "strange" sexual orientation, since he had pornographic
photos of his servants in his office. Upon learning this, she flees to her parents' house and
nothing is ever heard from Jean De Satigny until Blanca is called to recognize his corpse.
When fleeing the count's house, Blanca was about to give birth. She gives birth to her
daughter in her parents' house, with the help of her brother Jaime (who is a doctor). The
daughter's name is Alba. After a series of events, the communist party wins but a few days
later, the military, financed by conservative politicians, such as Esteban Trueba, carry out a
coup d'état and overthrow the Candidate who is deduced to be Salvador Allende (former
president of Chile ). During the first 20 years of Alba's life, a man who was called "the Poet"
was always named, who would also be another famous poet known in Chile.
The novel begins and ends with the same statement: "Barabbas came to the family by sea."
The story is presented as a compilation of writings by Esteban Trueba, the entries in the diary
of Clara, his wife, and the editions and annotations of his granddaughter Alba. As the book is a
compilation of writings by different authors, the point of view changes frequently without
notice.
The story begins with an entry from the girl Clara's diary on a Holy Thursday followed by a
comment at a noon mass in the capital of an unknown country in South America. The
scandalous incident at the church sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
Some readers say that generations of the Trueba family are employed as a roman à clef.
According to them, the Poet in the novel is probably Pablo Neruda and the author's uncle,
Salvador Allende, is both the Candidate and the President. This is supported by the fact that,
when in 1981 she received the news that her ninety-year-old grandfather was dying, Isabel
Allende began to write a letter that later became the manuscript of "The House of the Spirits."

℡ 959 650 397 ^ 959 650 399
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Some readers were disgusted by the book's graphic descriptions, while others found
Ministry of
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the "magical realism" elements (such as ghosts) difficult to believe or simply a poor copy of
the Nobel Prize winner's "One Hundred Years of Solitude." Gabriel García Márquez, undisputed
father of magical realism. In any case, The House of the Spirits is generally listed among the
classics of Latin American literature.
Esteban Trueba is a humble citizen who leaves for the mines to marry his beloved (Rosa del
Valle). Unfortunately, Rosa dies poisoned by mistake, since those from the political party rivals
to her father's wanted to assassinate Severo del Valle so that he would not win the elections.
Esteban has a strong character, and constantly suffers from attacks of anger, anxiety and
violence. He suffers a lot when Rosa dies, and decides to completely rebuild the old hacienda
abandoned by his father so he can forget about Rosa and become rich. Ten years later he has
managed to rebuild the entire farm and cares about the farmers who work for him. Shortly
after, he learns of the upcoming death of his mother (whom he did not have much esteem for)
and ends up marrying Clara, the younger sister of his first fiancée (the beautiful Rosa). Both
women were daughters of a wealthy liberal politician (Severo del Valle) who lost part of his
fortune because he did not listen to his daughter Clara who warned him of what was going to
happen to him (as she also predicted the death of her sister, among other things), his partner
would betray him to get rich and go to the Caribbean.
Clara is a mysterious woman with inexplicable magical powers. Esteban and Clara have three
children: The first-born Blanca and the two twins Jaime and Nicolás. The girl falls in love since
childhood with a rebellious peasant with whom she later has a daughter, Alba. Just before the
twins were born, Rosa's parents die in a car accident against a train.
The story takes place in a period that covers almost a century, telling the experiences of
Esteban and Clara, their daughter Blanca and Pedro Tercero García, and Alba and Miguel,
whose lives were influenced by the coup d'état carried out by the forces Chilean military,
helped by scams and boycotts by the upper classes.
Throughout the novel the characters move in the midst of the social and political environment
of the time, to which are added the magical elements introduced by the author.

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You can also see both sides of the social scale: on the one hand, Esteban Trueba who
Ministry of
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amasses a fortune becoming an important man and, on the other, the workers who begin to
understand that they are the main axis of the system and not simple slaves in charge. of
wealthy patrons like Esteban Trueba himself.
In 1993 the novel was made into a film with the original title The
House of the Spirits . It was directed by the Danish Bille August
and starred Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons. In 1994
the film won a dozen awards, mainly German and Danish, among
which several Robert, the Bayerischer Filmpreis, the Deutscher
Filmpreis or Lola de Oro and a
Choral at the Havana Film Festival.

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SOURCES
Ministry of
Culture
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/la_casa_de_los_esp%c3%adritus
TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
http://www.clubcultura.com/clubliteratura/clubetrabajos/allende/index.htm
http://umbral.uprrp.edu/audioconference/vision-america-latina-isabel-allende
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THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS

HUELVA Public Library

He was born in Lima while his father served as Chile's

HUELVA Public Library

SOME OF HIS WORKS

The House of the Spirits (1982)

The Porcelain Fat Lady (1984)

A delicious children's story in which, in fact, she is fat and made of

Of love and shadow (1984)

HUELVA Public Library

Web Publication date:

Luna, sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, is a story pregnant with

Tales of Eva Luna (1989)

The Infinite Plan (1991)

Gregory Reeves is a "gringo" who seems to navigate the sea of marginalization of

HUELVA Public Library

Web Publication date:

Fortune's Daughter (1999)

Eliza Sommers is a young Chilean who lives in Valparaíso in 1894, the

Portrait in sepia (2000)

City of Beasts (2002)

HUELVA Public Library

Web Publication date:

Zorro: The Legend Begins (2005)

Inés of my soul (2006)

Inés Suárez is a young and humble seamstress from Extremadura

The sum of the days (2007)

The Island Under the Sea (2009)

HUELVA Public Library

HUELVA Public Library

THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS

HUELVA Public Library

Web Publication date:

HUELVA Public Library

HUELVA Public Library

HUELVA Public Library

TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LOCATE YOUR LIBRARY

HUELVA Public Library

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