¿Quién no conoce al Zorro, el astuto y travieso enmascarado? Lo que no sabíamos — de cómo surgió el héroe — se resuelve en estas páginas, que nos revelan el misterio de su doble personalidad. Aquí reencontramos a su amigo Bernardo, su corcel, Tornado, su prodigioso látigo, la Z con que firma sus hazañas y mucho más.
Nacido en 1795 en la California hispana, Diego de la Vega está atrapado entre dos mundos. Su padre es un heroico militar convertido en un próspero hacendado, su madre es unaform, as fairy tales. Just as the more mystical elements of Allendes past have shaped her work, so has the hard-bitten reality. Working as a journalist in Chile, Allende was forced to flee the country with her family after her uncle, President Salvador Allende, was killed in a coup in 1973. Out of letters to family back in Chile came the manuscript that was to become Allendes first novel. Her arrival on the publishing scene in 1985 with The House of the Spirits was instantly recognized as a literary event. The New York Times called it a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present and future of Latin America. To read a book by Allende is to believe in (or be persuaded of) the power of transcendence, spiritual and otherwise. Her characters are often what she calls marginal, those who strive to live on the fringes of society. It may be someone like Of Love and Shadows s Hipolito Ranquileo, who makes his living as a circus clown; or Eva Luna, a poor orphan who is the center of two Allende books (Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna). Allendes characters have in common an inner fortitude that proves stronger than their adversity, and a sense of lineage that propels them both forward and backward. When you meet a central character in an Allende novel, be prepared to meet a few generations of his or her family. This multigenerational thread drives The House of the Spirits, the tale of the South American Trueba family. Not only did the novel draw Allende critical accolades (with such breathless raves as spectacular, astonishing and mesmerizing from major reviewers), it landed her firmly in the magic realist tradition of predecessor (and acknowledged influence) Gabriel García Márquez. Some of its characters also reappeared in the historical novels Portrait in Sepia and Daughter of Fortune. Its strange that my work has been classified as magic realism, Allende has said, because I see my novels as just being realistic literature. Indeed, much of what might be considered magic to others is real to Allende, who based the character Clara del Valle in The House of the Spirits on her own reputedly clairvoyant grandmother. And she has drawn as well upon the political violence that visited her life: Of Love and Shadows (1987) centers on a political crime in Chile, and other Allende books allude to the ideological divisions that affected the author so critically. But all of her other work was rehearsal, says Allende, for what she considers her most difficult and personal book. Paula is written for Allendes daughter, who died in 1992 after several months in a coma. Like Allendes fiction, it tells Paulas story through that of Allendes own and of her relatives. Allende again departed from fiction in Aphrodite, a book that pays homage to the romantic powers of food (complete with recipes for two such as Reconciliation Soup). The books lighthearted subject matter had to have been a necessity for Allende, who could not write for nearly three years after the draining experience of writing Paula. Whichever side of reality she is on, Allendes voice is unfailingly romantic and life-affirming, creating mystery even as she uncloaks it. Like a character in Of Love and Shadows, Allende tells stories of her own invention whose aim is to ease suffering and make time pass more quickly, and she succeeds.
Good To Know
Allende has said that the character of Gregory Reeves in The Infinite Plan is based on her husband, Willie Gordon. Allende begins all of her books on January 8, which she considers lucky because it was the day she began writing a letter to her dying grandfather that later became The House of the Spirits. She began her career as a journalist, editing the magazine Paula and later contributing to the Venezuelan paper El Nacional.