Peru born Writer, Feminist who dosent take anything for granted: Isabel Allende

Peru- born Chilean writer Isabel Allende, 77, who identifies herself as a' novelist, feminist, and philanthropist' on carrying her family pride name with pride , immersing herself in poetry before every novel and now her latest novel A Long Petal of the Sea (Bloomsbury).

The latest book, A Long Petal of the Sea (Bloomsbury), has solid journalistic and fictional elements. How much do you like to be a journalist or a fiction writer today?

Yes I am a fiction writer but I use the skills I learned as a journalist in my work, such as conducting an interview, reporting, editing and so on. I had to catch raw readers by the neck as a journalist, and keep them interested to the end. When I write novels I don't forget that. And I want my readers to stick with me and take my story to heart. I do think I have a curiosity about the world from a journalist and my books are focused on careful research. Though I was labeled a magic realism writer, I try to portray reality in all its complexity.

you have always maintained that literature from all over the world contains elements of it. Does that remain a special tool that can be made successful in the todays? Or do we need more magic and more realism now?

Writers and artists agree the universe is a mysterious place, we have no answers for everything, we have very little influence over it. Our job is to concentrate on and try to interpret the unknown. This always has a place in the world, not just in the past but in Latin America. I've just read Ta-Nehisi Coates ' novel The Water Dance (2019). It is about the brutal reality of slavery but it is also a magic story.

Your debut novel— The House of the Spirits (1982) and your non-fiction tribute to your daughter Paula (1994) are two of your finest bits. You wrote letters to your deceased grandfather in the first, and in the other, you dwelt on your daughter's death. How difficult was writing these intensely personal books?

Chose to write my first book, The House of the Spirits, I figured it was a chronicle or a memoir with ease, easily, without preparing it or even knowing it was a novel. I had never read a book review or taken a writing class, I had no idea the book industry was nearly a minefield. I will never again have that confidence and that innocence. Writing Paula, my daughter's story, was painful but important because it made me understand what had happened during that horrible year of her illness and acknowledged that death was her only way out of her inert body jail.

Were writers meant to be politicians? And honestly all over the world in today's times, do they even have a choice?

I can't speak for others. In my novels, political and social issues are inevitable, because my stories are placed in a certain reality; they are not floating in a void untouched by the world's events. To my view the last thing is to send a message or to preach. That's not the fictional role. The person I am, though, my ideas and feelings are expressed clearly between the lines and the themes I choose to write about. My last three novels, for instance, deal with migrants, refugees and displaced people seeking a safe haven. That is a political matter.

Talking to a journalist in France in 1985, Milan Kundera said authors living away from home should not necessarily become' migrants' who concentrate on the' displacement' aspect of their lives. Was the notion of having a' family' or living in exile placing a burden on authors ' lives?

It's up to the writer and the circumstances. There is no rule as to how one should feel about being displaced. In my case it has been very important to get away from my country. Exile turned me into a writer. My first novel had been a nostalgic exercise. I wanted the world and the people I'd lost to recover. I don't take anything for granted as an immigrant and an eternal foreigner, I observe carefully, I listen and I ask questions. So I get my stories.

You keep writing in Spanish but now you live in a country predominantly English speaking (the United States). What effect does that have on your work?

Living in the US hinders my work. You'll find multiple dictionaries and grammar books on my desk. Before a new book starts – always on January 8 I read poetry in Spanish for a week. That brings back my language's rhythm, flavor, and richness. When I send my manuscript to my Spanish agent, it is checked by someone who ensures I don't use English translated sentences.