How Isabel Allende Gets It Done

Isabel Allende still remembers clearly how she used to carry the manuscript for La Casa de los Espíritus with her everywhere she went, like a mother with a newborn baby she couldn’t bear to be apart from. She began writing it as a letter to her dying grandfather after she was forced to flee Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. Her debut novel, it launched her into literary stardom at age 40. Since then, she has written 26 books, which have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold over 77 million copies worldwide.