The House of the Spirits: Introduced by Christopher Hitchens

Chilean writer Isabel Allende's classic novel is both a richly symbolic family saga and the riveting story of an unnamed Latin American country's turbulent history.

In a triumph of magic realism, Allende constructs a spirit-ridden world and fills it with colorful and all-too-human inhabitants. The Trueba family's passions, struggles, and secrets span three generations and a century of violent social change, culminating in a crisis that brings the proud and tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter to opposite sides of the barricades. Against a backdrop of revolution and counterrevolution, Allende brings to life a family whose private bonds of love and hatred are more complex and enduring than the political allegiances that set them at odds. The House of the Spirits not only brings another nation's history thrillingly to life, but also makes its people's joys and anguishes wholly our own.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

Author: Isabel Allende
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Published: 04/19/2005
Pages: 520
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 8.22h x 5.32w x 1.13d
ISBN: 9781400043187

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 8.4
Point Value: 32
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 58067 / House of the Spirits

About the Author
Isabel Allende is Chilean and worked for many years as a journalist. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay area.