Violeta

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What to expect

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING NOVEL FROM LITERARY LEGEND ISABEL ALLENDE
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'Epic, beautifully crafted . . . Gripping from start to finish' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'A moving exploration of both the pain and the freedom of being an outsider’ NEW STATESMAN
'A new novel by Isabel Allende is always a treat' DAILY MAIL
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One extraordinary woman.
One hundred years of history.
One unforgettable story.

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first daughter in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events. The ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

Told in the form of a letter to someone Violeta loves above all others, this is the story of a hundred-year life – of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Bearing witness to a century of history, it is a life shaped by the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.

Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination and sense of humour will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.
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Critics Review

  • Gripping, moving and convincing, by a master storyteller, about a long life, well lived

    Country & Townhouse

  • For the past 40 years the Chilean-American novelist Isabel Allende has drawn readers into her richly imagined narratives, often inspired by her own history or that of South America . . . With her customary vibrant and compelling prose, Allende’s Violeta is a moving exploration of both the pain and the freedom of being an outsider

    New Statesman

  • Violeta is full of life, a great sweeping story like a river in spate. It makes for enjoyable and undemanding reading . . . I can’t imagine readers turning it aside because they are bored

    Scotsman

  • There’s extreme drama at nearly every turn, with the continent itself lurching murderously between communism and fascism in the background … This breakneck novel is loosely about the extent to which a life is at the mercy of history

    Daily Mail

  • [Allende] is terrific on old age, and shows how adventure doesn’t have to stop once you start stooping

    i paper

  • [Allende’s] breakneck recital of events . . . has pace and verve, captured in Frances Riddle’s enjoyably fast-flowing translation

    Financial Times

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