Isabel Allende, writer: "Immigrants always look toward the future, toward what is yet to come"
The Chilean writer, recently awarded the Planeta Prize, has made uprootedness one of the great themes of her work
Few voices in Spanish-language literature know as closely what it means to start over in another country as that of Isabel Allende. Born in Lima in 1942, raised in Chile, exiled to Venezuela after the 1973 coup d’état and settled for decades in California, the writer has turned that experience into literary material.
Her reflection on immigration is circulating again these days , just as Allende, 84, has just won the 2026 Planeta Prize with "The Hour Before Dawn," the sequel to "The House of the Spirits."
Isabel Allende, exiled and immigrant
The idea comes from "My Invented Country" (2003), a memoir about Chile in which the author distinguishes between two ways of leaving. As she writes, the exile lives looking back, clinging to his wounds, while " the immigrant looks toward the future , ready to take advantage of the opportunities within reach".
Allende has lived both experiences. "I am an eternal foreigner" , she explained in an interview with the American network PBS, in which she recalled that she was born in Peru , grew up in Chile and was a political refugee before becoming an immigrant. That is why she says she has no roots anywhere.
That journey explains her defense of those who cross borders. In an interview with Telemundo , the writer maintained that " the immigrant contributes to the country much more than they receive " and called for policies that make it understood. Through her foundation she also works with immigrant women and girls.
A Planet with the flavor of return
Her new novel , which will arrive in bookstores on November 4 , brings back Alba Trueba, granddaughter of Esteban Trueba and Clara del Valle, who returns pregnant to the family home after being imprisoned and tortured by the dictatorship. The award , endowed with one million euros , also marks her move to the Planeta publishing house after more than four decades linked to Plaza & Janés.
In the midst of the celebration, Allende has once again looked at the present with concern. Faced with the rise of authoritarianism, she confessed, according to Vía País , that she is once again feeling the same fear that forced her to leave her country.
