Interview by Alda Bardhyli *
Q: In our country you become famous with the novel "The House of the Spirits”. I read it when I was a teenager and I'm pretty convinced that this novel made me fall in love with the literature. How was born this novel, full of extraordinary fantasies and of marvelous characters? How can you describe Isabelle Allende before she took the wonderful way of being a writer and how was compiled this wonderful book?

Allende: After the military coup in 1973 in Chile , I left my country with my husband and my two children because we did not want to live in a dictatorship. We went to
Venezuela. At the beginning it was hard because we had no money, no connections, no work and only tourist visas. I felt lonely, I missed everything that I had lost: my house, my grandfather, my job as a journalist, my friends and family. I missed my
country. "The House of the Spirits" is the fictionalized story of my family and my country. I think that unconsciously I was trying to recover the place and the people that I had lost. Before I wrote the book I felt lonely and lost. The book gave me a voice and a vocation. I discovered that I love telling stories and that writing was my
calling.

Q: Before being a writer, you have been a journalist. How came this transformation and what kind of impact has had to you the period of journalism?

Allende: When we moved to Venezuela I could not work as a journalist, I had all kinds of odd jobs to make a living. It was very frustrating. Writing my first
novel was easy because I had the training of writing, I had done it for a long time. In journalism I learned to have discipline, to work under pressure and with a deadline, to keep in mind the readers, to use language efficiently and to research. I like literature more than journalism because it gives me more freedom, time and space to tell the story.

Q: Let’s get back again to the past. It was the joy, or the anger that pushed you being a writer? Or it was an old-times dream, since early childhood?

Allende: As a child I loved telling stories to my brothers and friends, but I had no dreams of becoming a writer. Women of my generation in Chile were not supposed to
be creative, they were supposed to marry and have children. On January 8, l981, we received a phone call in Venezuela saying that my grandfather was dying in Chile. I adored the old man. I started a letter for him, then he died and I continued to write. A
year later I had 500 pages, it was no longer a letter, it was a novel. The literature, I think, is like a separate world, a world when the writer is trying to create every day a
different life, a life near the imagination, but not taking to distances from the reality.

Q: How is the world you have ever wanted to write about? Which are the pains, the passions or the disillusions which go along your artistic journey?

Allende: Writing is a joyful pursuit for me. It is hard to sit down 10 hours a day to create the story, but the process in the mind is wonderful. I live in the story, I become the characters. Book by book I have created my own universe where I feel comfortable. There is pain and passion, of course, but I have never felt frustrated or disillusioned.

Q: You are a very successful writer. Which was your strong weapon to toward this success? Which was your inner strength the one that kept you going even when
the fate was not in your side?

Allende: I don't have any special strength. Writing is what love to do. It is easy for me. Success is a matter of luck, more than anything else. I think that "The House of the Spirits" owes part of its success to the fact that it was published in l982, when the world was reading many Latin American authors, when people in Europe were interested in Chile , when the name of Allende was well known everywhere. Also, I was the first woman writer in all male club of Latin American witers. That sparked some interest in the publishers and the readers.

Q: You have traveled in many countries. What kind of impact have these trips in your writings?

Allende: I am aware of how vast and complex the world is. I am fascinated by the similarities that connect people, more than by the differences that separate them. I
feel that the world is my theater, I can place my characters anywhere I want.

Q: Why Allende is very soft and very caring toward the feminine world? How would you describe the masculine world?

Allende: Men and women live in the same world and in my books I have all kinds of characters, male and female. It is easier for me to write from a woman's perspective
because I know women very well and I have been a feminist all my life. I like brave and adventurous women, I like compassionate and caring men.

Q: What is the freedom for you?

Allende: Freedom for me is supporting myself, being economic and intellectually independent, making my own decisions, being myself. But I am perfectly aware
that my freedom is less important than the freedom of the community. There is little individual freedom if there is no freedom for everybody.

Q: Now a personal question. I think the Albanian readers to whom you are a great writer are very interested to know. I'm talking about "Paola". We know what this
book is all about. Is it a book in which among and above anything you want to tell that the art can survive to all the kinds of pains and loses?

Allende: I wrote "Paula' because I wanted to remember my daughter and keep the memory of her alive in our family. I didn't expect that book to become so widely
read and to touch so many readers. I realize that everybody has losses and pain - maybe that is why so many readers connect with that story.

Q: What makes strong a woman like you? You are also and always a beautiful
lady. If we take a look at your life it was not such a happy one?

Allende: My life is happy. I have had stress, too much work, losses, death, separation, but I have had much love, wonderful children, a strong and loving mother, success in my work, adventure and very good health. I cannot complain! I have been very lucky. Whatever strength I have, comes from the difficulties that I have confronted. An easy life doesn't make you strong.

Q: Have you ever had problems with the critics? What do you think about it?

Allende: I have had good and bad reviews by different critics in many languages. I do not worry about the bad critics and I do not take for granted the good ones. I do my work the best I can. Once it is published it doesn't belong to me anymore and I have to be ready to receive criticism without getting upset.

Q: What do you think of today's literature, worldwide?

Allende: I read a lot of fiction from the US , Europe, India , Latin America , etc. Everyday there is a new wonderful book published somewhere in the world!

Q: How can you describe your creative process? Do you need any special condition to start writing?

Allende: I start all my books on January 8. During the first 6 months of the year I write almost all day, I do very little else. The rest of the year I travel, give lectures, go on book-tours, etc. My family is very important to me. My son and my grandchildren live very near my house, so I see them all the time. I am finishing a memoir about my family (only about the last 10 years) and I started a historical novel about the Caribbean.

Q: How is your creative process or do you need a certain special condition to start writing?

Allende: Ideas take a long time to become books. I live with the story inside me for years before it is ready to be written. I research a lot about the time and the place where the story will happen. Once I start the book I don't stop until I have a complete first draft, which I correct many times, over and over. I have a little cabin in the garden where I write, - on a computer - but I could write almost anywhere. (I wrote my first novel on a portable typewriter in the kitchen of our apartment in Caracas).

Q: Allow me please to make a question about love. You write of love so graciously. What is love and can ever exist out there a man that fully deserves such a great
feeling from an woman?

Allende: I believe in romantic love, the kind of love I describe in my books, because I have experienced it. Fortunately I have a very good marriage: I have been in love with Willie for 20 years and I hope that we will always be together. Our relationship has not always been easy, because life tends to pull people apart, not to bring them closer, but we are still together and we enjoy each other. It would be very hard for me to live without Willie's love.

* Alda Bardhyli is a staff writer of Shqip Newspaper