She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just the opposite, she felt that they had tempered her, made her strong, given her pride in making decisions and paying the consequences for them.

Fluent in English as a second language Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003 having lived in California with her American husband since 1989. Allende whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias 2002) which have been commercially successful.