The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende's debut novel. The House of the Spirits chronicles the saga of a powerful family of Latin American landowners. The despotic patriarch Esteban Trueba has built, with an iron fist, a private empire that begins to falter due to the passage of time and an explosive social environment. Ultimately, the patriarch's personal decline will drag the Truebas into a painful disintegration. Caught in dramatic family relationships, the characters in this remarkable novel embody the social and spiritual tensions of an era spanning much of this century.

The House of the Spirits was adapted into a film starring, among others, Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, and Antonio Banderas. With tenderness and impeccable literary craftsmanship, Isabel Allende shapes her characters' destinies as an inseparable part of the collective destiny of a continent marked by racial mixing, social injustices, and the search for identity. This accomplished narrative universe is the result of a lucid historical and social awareness, as well as an aesthetic approach that constitutes a unique expression of magical realism.