I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the '40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.

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.