My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile

In My Invented Country Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country, a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today.

The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author’s past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

In this deeply moving exploration of memory and identity, Allende lays bare the heart of a woman, a family, and a nation.

• A Memoir of Exile: A life defined by two dates—September 11, 1973, which forced her from Chile, and September 11, 2001, which redefined her relationship with her new home in America.
• An Intimate Family History: The story of an extraordinary family at the center of Chilean history, forever marked by the assassination of her uncle, President Salvador Allende.
• The Country of Memory: A journey back to the Chile of her youth—a place of magnificent landscapes, eccentric relatives, and potent myths—as she reconciles the country she carries in her heart with the one that exists today.
• A Search for Belonging: A powerful reflection on what it means to be an immigrant, to live between two worlds, and to forge a coherent identity far from the land of one’s birth.