The House of the Spirits - Softcover

Allende, Isabel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553258656 ISBN 13: 9780553258653

Publisher: Bantam, 1986

Synopsis

As a girl, Clara del Valle can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, Rosa the Beautiful, Clara is mute for nine years. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon to the stern and volatile landowner Esteban Trueba. Set in an unnamed Latin American country over three generations, The House of the Spirits is a magnificent epic of a proud and passionate family, secret loves and violent revolution.

About this title

From the Publisher

Here, in an astonishing debut by a gifted storyteller, is the magnificent saga of proud and passionate men and women and the turbulent times through which they suffer and triumph. They are the Truebas. And theirs is a world you will not want to leave, and one you will not forget.

Esteban -- The patriarch, a volatile and proud man whose lust for land is legendary and who is haunted by his tyrannical passion for the wife he can never completely possess.

Clara -- The matriarch, elusive and mysterious, who foretells family tragedy and shapes the fortunes of the house of the Truebas.

Blanca -- Their daughter, soft-spoken yet rebellious, whose shocking love for the son of her father's foreman fuels Esteban's everlasting contempt... even as it produces the grandchild he adores.

Alba -- The fruit of Blanca's forbidden love, a luminous bearty, a fiery and willful woman... the family's break with the past and link to the future.

"Extraordinary... Powerful... Sharply observant, witty and eloquent." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Mesmerizing... A novel of force and charm." -- The Washington Post

"That rarest of successes -- a book about one family and one country that is a book about the world and becomes the world in a book." -- Cosmopolitan

"Nothing short of astonishing... In The House Of The Spirits Isabelle Allende has indeed shown us the relationships between past and present, family and nation, city and country, spiritual and political values. She has done so with enormous imagination, sensitivity, and compassion." -- Jane Futcher, San Francisco Chronicle

From the Back Cover

"Extraordinary... Powerful... Sharply observant, witty and eloquent." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Mesmerizing... A novel of force and charm." -- The Washington Post

"That rarest of successes -- a book about one family and one country that is a book about the world and becomes the world in a book." -- Cosmopolitan

"Nothing short of astonishing... In The House Of The Spirits Isabelle Allende has indeed shown us the relationships between past and present, family and nation, city and country, spiritual and political values. She has done so with enormous imagination, sensitivity, and compassion." -- Jane Futcher, San Francisco Chronicle

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0553258656
• ISBN 13: 9780553258653
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 433