The House Of The Spirits

"The amazing Isabel Allende, the niece of Chile's ousted President Salvador Allende, is creating the kind of literary sensation most writers only dream of. And "The House of the Spirits" is no ordinary first novel. It is an exotic vision - a brilliant, impassioned epic - and a personal coup for the young journalist who "had to write it." The book seemed to come from nowhere: a first novel by a forty two-year-old Chilean journalist that has dazzled readers throughout Europe and Latin America, making its author the most unexpected sensation since the emergence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez." -- Cathleen Medwick Vogue "An extraordinary debut, The House of the Spirits marks the appearance of a major international writer. Rarely has a first novel catapulted a writer so suddenly to international attention and acclaim as The House of the Spirits. The author, Isabel Allende, is niece of former Chilean president, Salvador Allende Gossens; yet she was totally unknown to the world at large until the events of last year." Alfred A Knopf "With this spectacular first novel, Isabel Allende becomes the first woman to join what has heretofore been an exclusive male club of Latin American novelists. "The House of the Spirits" draws on this experience, though always in veiled terms. A meticulously detailed family saga spanning four generations, the novel is set in a mythified land of volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes, peopled by characters who seem to derive their extravagance from their natural surroundings." -- Alexander Coleman New York Times