Product Description
<strong>1, </strong>
<strong>A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende :-</strong>
<span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>NEW YORK TIMES </span><span class=”a-text-bold”>BESTSELLER • From the author of </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>The House of the Spirits, </span><span class=”a-text-bold”>this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.</span>
<span class=”a-text-bold”>“One of the most richly imagined portrayals of the Spanish Civil War to date, and one of the strongest and most affecting works in [Isabel Allende’s] long career.”—</span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>The New York Times Book Review</span>
<span class=”a-text-bold”>NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>Esquire </span><span class=”a-text-bold”>• </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>Good Housekeeping </span><span class=”a-text-bold”>• </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>Parade</span>
In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires.
Together with two thousand other refugees, Roser and Victor embark on the SS <span class=”a-text-italic”>Winnipeg,</span> a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile: “the long petal of sea and wine and snow.” As unlikely partners, the couple embraces exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war. Starting over on a new continent, they face trial after trial, but they will also find joy as they patiently await the day when they might go home. Through it all, their hope of returning to Spain keeps them going. Destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world, Roser and Victor will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.
A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, <span class=”a-text-italic”>A Long Petal of the Sea</span> shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.
<span class=”a-text-bold”>Praise for </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>A Long Petal of the Sea</span>
“Both an intimate look at the relationship between one man and one woman and an epic story of love, war, family, and the search for home, this gorgeous novel, like all the best novels, transports the reader to another time and place, and also sheds light on the way we live now.”<span class=”a-text-bold”>—J. Courtney Sullivan, author of </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>Saints for All Occasions</span><span class=”a-text-bold”>
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“This is a novel not just for those of us who have been Allende fans for decades, but also for those who are brand-new to her work: What a joy it must be to come upon Allende for the first time. She knows that all stories are love stories, and the greatest love stories are told by time.”<span class=”a-text-bold”>—Colum McCann, National Book Award–winning author of </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>Let the Great World Spin.</span>
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<strong>2,</strong>
<strong>The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende :-</strong>
<span class=”a-text-bold”>From the </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>New York Times</span><span class=”a-text-bold”> bestselling author of </span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>A Long Petal of the Sea</span><span class=”a-text-bold”> comes “a bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and more” (Associated Press).
“</span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>The Soul of a Woman</span><span class=”a-text-bold”> is Isabel Allende’s most liberating book yet.”—</span><span class=”a-text-bold a-text-italic”>Elle</span><span class=”a-text-bold”>
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“When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have.
As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one’s sexuality.
So what feeds the soul of feminists—and all women—today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over our bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will “light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished.”
