The writer Isabel Allende is very concerned about the future of the United States, the country where she lives, when there are voices denouncing "the possible end of democracy" and they even talk about a "civil war": "And so it begins, accepting that something can happen", not realizing what can be lost.
"I see the future of the United States badly and I’m not the only one", assures the author in an interview with Efe, in which she points out how these issues are already published in the press in the United States "with the most natural tone". In your opinion, "you start by accepting that something can happen and people relax into the possibility and don’t realize what they stand to lose. And since this country has never lost that, it doesn’t know what it is. Until he loses it, he will not know what it is, and then he will return to the value of democracy.", highlights the writer. And trust that a young generation will replace these "old politicians who would already have to go home or to an asylum". Political events have always been present in the novels of Isabel Allende who, close to turning 80, is the most widely read Spanish-language author in the world. Born in Peru, raised in Chile until she went into exile in 1973, the writer has lived in California since 1987 and defines herself as "eternal foreign". And they are also present in "purple" (Plaza&Janés), her latest novel, which has been published simultaneously in Spanish and English in the United States, Latin America and Spain, is the story of a woman whose life spans from 1920 to 2020, between two pandemics: the misnamed "spanish flu" and the current coronavirus. A pandemic, the current one, which recognizes that it is having a good time personally -she has written three books in this time- but explains that it is showing her what the women with whom the Isabel Allende Foundation works, dedicated to her daughter Paula, are suffering. , who died at the age of 29, and who pays for it with the money she gets from her books. Women "who have lost their job and will be the last to get it back, penniless, and often with a frustrated colleague who ends up drinking too much", says the author, who assures that "has risen tremendously" sexist violence. Sexist violence increases "every time there is a crisis of some kind: war, occupation, economic crisis, political crisis, religious fanaticism, political fanaticism… the first to suffer are women, the great victims, women and children". And although he acknowledges that progress has been made and more will be done in the fight against this violence, he insists that "we must end machismo": "All these things are derived from patriarchy, from a social, political, cultural, economic system that puts women at a tremendous disadvantage. There is a war against women", underlines. Its protagonist, Violeta del Valle, is marked from birth by extraordinary events, some of which are historical and will profoundly influence her life.
"I have been accused of writing with an epic breath, but the truth is that my life has been brutally influenced by external circumstances that I have not been able to control, such as political"Allende says. Therefore, you cannot write a novel detached from the context in which the characters move. And although he would love to write romance novels, he says that it is a genre that he is not given to, because the characters live on their passions in a kind of bubble where the outside world does not appear at all. "The French Revolution may be falling and these people continue to love, hate or be jealous of each other, as if the revolution did not exist". The dictatorships of Chile and Argentina also pass through his novel, as well as the impunity that existed for many and that exists in many countries: "Also in Spain", says the writer, who assures that "people are left with an open wound when there is impunity and there is at this moment in all of Latin America".
"There have been genocides in Central America, massacres of indigenous people, they have destroyed entire villages, they have burned people alive and nobody pays for that, but they get rich from it", complaint. Violeta, who recounts her life through a long letter addressed to her grandson, is a passionate woman and has several romantic relationships throughout her life: "how can I not believe in love in maturity, at any age, if I just got married?"Isabel Allende wonders. Violeta also has a daughter, Nieves, inspired by a stepdaughter of Isabel Allende, the only daughter of her second husband, who died very young, shortly after giving birth.
"Family, friends, acquaintances, I use them all", confesses Allende who already has another novel in the process of being translated that will come out next year, this time a fictional story about refugees.
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