“Allende turns the joyous preparation and consumption of fine food into an erotic catalyst.”
—New York Times Book Review
MY INVENTED COUNTRY: A MEMOIR
* * *
Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country, a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth, and magic of a homeland that she carries with her even today. The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle Salvador Allende Gossens on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks against her adopted homeland the United States on September 11, 2001, brought forth an overdue acknowledgment that Allende had indeed left home. My Invented Country, mimicking the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance between past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants and to all of us who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.
“The book gets my undivided attention when it expounds on the relationship of the author to that country of hers, invented, imaginary, fictional, to the story of her family, which is itself invented memory, and to her vocation as a narrator.”
—Los Angeles Times
PAULA: A MEMOIR
* * *
With an enchanting blend of magic realism, politics, and romance reminiscent of her classic bestseller The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende presents a soul-baring memoir that seizes the reader like a novel of suspense.
Written for her daughter, Paula, when she became ill and slipped into a coma, Paula is the colorful story of Allende’s life—from her early years in her native Chile, through the turbulent military coup of 1973, to the subsequent dictatorship and her family’s years of exile. In the telling, bizarre ancestors reveal themselves, delightful and bitter childhood memories surface, enthralling anecdotes of youthful years are narrated, and intimate secrets are softly whispered.
In an exorcism of death and a celebration of life, Isabel Allende explores the past and questions the gods. She creates a magical book that carries the reader from tears to laughter, and from terror through sensuality to wisdom. In Paula, readers will come to understand that the miraculous world of her novels is the world Isabel Allende inhabits—it is her enchanted reality.
“Spellbinding. . . . In flawlessly rich prose, [Allende] shares with us her most intimate feelings.”
—Washington Post Book World
THE SUM OF OUR DAYS
* * *
In The Sum of Our Days, internationally acclaimed author Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul as she shares her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory—and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
“Terrific. . . . Funny, insightful, moving, and filled with Allende’s unique voice.”
—USA Today
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About the Author
Born in Peru and raised in Chile, ISABEL ALLENDE is the author of a collection of stories, four memoirs, and eleven novels, most recently the New York Times bestselling Inés of My Soul. She lives in California.
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The House of the Spirits
Of Love and Shadows
Eva Luna
The Stories of Eva Luna
The Infinite Plan
Paula
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
Daughter of Fortune
Portrait in Sepia
My Invented Country
Zorro
Inés of My Soul
The Sum of Our Days
FOR YOUNG ADULTS
City of the Beasts
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
Credits
Author photograph by William Gordon
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
FOREST OF THE PYGMIES. Copyright © 2004 by Isabel Allende. English translation copyright © 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Harper Perennial edition published 2009.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Allende, Isabel.
[Bosque de los Pigmeos. English]
Forest of the Pygmies / Isabel Allende ; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-076198-9
EPub Edition March 2014 ISBN 9780062254498
1. Elephants—Fiction. 2. Grandmothers—Fiction. 3. Poaching—Fiction. 4. Kenya—Fiction. 5. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. I. Peden, Margaret Sayers. II. Title.
PZ7.A43912 Fo 2005
2004014448
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
ISBN 978-0-06-182510-1 (Harper Perennial edition)
09 10 11 12 13 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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