The Stories of Eva Luna

Isabel Allende

Simon and Schuster, 1999 - Fiction - 330 pages

Isabel Allende now ranks as one of the world's most beloved authors. In 1988, she introduced the world to Eva Luna, in a novel of the same name that recounted the adventurous life of a poor young Latin American woman who finds friendship, love, and some measure of worldly success through her powers as a storyteller. Her most ambitious novel up to that time, "Eva Luna" was described by the "Washington Post" as "a cascade of stories [that] tumbles out before the reader, stories vivid, passionate and human." Returning to this tale by popular demand, Allende unveiled "The Stories of Eva Luna" in 1991. A treasure trove of brilliantly crafted tales, the book showed us once again why "Eva Luna" and her much-celebrated creator have won such a large and devoted readership.

We begin with Rolf Carle, the European refugee, journalist, and lover who figured so largely in "Eva Luna." Lying in bed with Eva Luna, he asks her to tell him a story. "What about?" she asks. "Tell me a story you have never told anyone before. Make it up for me." And so she does, giving Rolf Carle and the reader twenty-three vibrant, enchanting demonstrations of her artistry. Here are "compesinos" and rich people, guerrillas and fortune-tellers, great beauties and tyrants, the foreign rendered indelibly familiar. Here is Clarisa, "born before the city had electricity, she lived to see television coverage of the first astronaut levitating on the moon, and she died of amazement when the Pope came for a visit and was met in the street by homosexuals dressed up as nuns"; here is El Capitan, who waited for forty years before proposing to his dancing partner; Horacio Fortunato, a circus owner and entrepreneur, whose encounterwith a languid foreign woman will force him to change his roguish ways even as he attempts to court her; Maurizia Rugieri, who abandons her husband and child for a young medical student, converting their life together into an opera of her own design; Nicholas Vidal, who "had always known that a woman would cost him his life" but never suspected that it would be the wife of Judge Hidalgo; Raid Halbi, once again displaying his concern and wisdom for the people of Agua Santa; Marcia Liberman, the wife of a European diplomat, whose brief affair with the President for Life of an unnamed Latin American country has startling rewards...

Love, vengeance, nostalgia, compassion, irony -- Isabel Allende leaves no emotion untouched in these stories. Opulently imagined, stirringly told, they confirm her place as one of the world's leading writers.

Contents

• Wicked Girl: 23
• Toads Mouth: 57
• The Gold of Tomas Vargas: 63
• The Schoolteachers Guest: 215
• Letters of Betrayed Love: 283
• And of Clay Are We Created: 317

About the author

Isabel Allende was born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, the daughter of a Chilean diplomat. When her parents separated, young Isabel moved with her mother to Chile, where she spent the rest of her childhood. She married at the age of 19 and had two children, Paula and Nicolas. Her uncle was Salvador Allende, the president of Chile. When he was overthrown in the coup of 1973, she fled Chile, moving to Caracas, Venezuela. While living in Venezuela, Allende began writing her novels, many of them exploring the close family bonds between women. Her first novel, The House of the Spirits, has been translated into 27 languages, and was later made into a film. She then wrote Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and The Stories of Eva Luna, all set in Latin America. The Infinite Plan was her first novel to take place in the United States. She explores the issues of human rights and the plight of immigrants and refugees in her novel, In The Midst of Winter. In Paula, Allende wrote her memoirs in connection with her daughter's illness and death. She delved into the erotic connections between food and love in Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. In addition to writing books, Allende has worked as a TV interviewer, magazine writer, school administrator, and a secretary at a U.N. office in Chile. She received the 1996 Harold Washington Literacy Award. She lives in California. Her title Maya's Notebook made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2013.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Stories of Eva Luna; Scribner classics
• Author: Isabel Allende
• Translated by: Margaret Sayers Peden
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 1999
• ISBN: 0684873591, 9780684873596
• Length: 330 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / General; Fiction / Short Stories (single author)