NEW YORK — Over the last year, Isabel Allende has been coping with loss and grief after the passing of her mother, a stepfather whom she “adored,” and an ex-husband. But not everything was bad, she says: “On the other hand, I also got married last year.”
At 77, the Chilean author still believes in love. “I am not afraid of it,” she says laughing when mentioning her third nuptials, to New York lawyer Roger Cukras.
She also published her 17th novel and 24th book, “A Long Petal of the Sea.”
It follows Victor and Roser, a couple fleeing the Spanish Civil War. The writer places them among the 2,000 refugees aboard the real-life SS Winnipeg, a cargo ship arranged by the poet Pablo Neruda to bring Spanish exiles to Chile.
It is the third novel about refugees, displacement and migration by Allende, who was born in Peru, raised in Chile and lived in exile in Venezuela before settling down in California about 30 years ago.
In an interview with the AP, Allende spoke enthusiastically about her life, work and her own loves.
“A Long Petal of the Sea” presents what Neruda did to save 2,000 refugees in the Winnipeg to a new generation. You have said that Neruda advised you to quit journalism and pursue literature. Did you want to honor him in some way with this novel?
It was impossible not to honor him, because all the Winnipeg odyssey was the workmanship of Neruda. Neruda followed the Spanish Civil War closely because he loved Spain, he had friends among the intellectuals and the artists of Republican Spain, and when the drama of half a million refugees at the frontier with France erupted, he convinced the Chilean government to let him bring immigrants to Chile, Spaniards who were in concentration camps in France. In Chile, the right wing and the Catholic Church opposed their coming because they were all leftists, many of them atheists, known for allegedly burning churches and raping nuns.
In the notes of the book, it says that you first heard about Neruda’s “ship of hope” as a kid. How did it affect you?
I heard about the arrival of Spanish republicans in Chile because, even though it happened before I was born, it was shortly before I was born, and some of those people were friends of my family. I would see them coming for lunch, or for dinner. It didn’t make a big impression on me back then. But when I was in Venezuela, among the thousands of exiles was a Chilean man named Victor Pey Casado, who was one of the passengers of the Winnipeg and was living in his second exile. He told me everything that he went through. He was the one who really consolidated the story for me. It took 40 years before I wrote it.
The love story in “A Long Petal of the Sea” is somewhat unconventional, starting with a marriage arranged for survival reasons. What has been your most unconventional love?
I have had three husbands, but maybe my most unconventional relationship was when I fell in love with an Argentine musician and I left my family, I left my children, my husband, and went after him to Spain. I mean, that was absolutely crazy and I regret it very much. I regret it because I inflicted a lot of pain in my children. It took a lot for them to forgive me. That was my least conventional love, but now I am also in an unconventional situation having fallen in love at 74 and marrying at 77.
