My Invented Country

Two recent events have triggered this avalanche of memories. The first was a casual observation by my grandson Alejandro, who surprised me at the mirror scrutinizing the map of my wrinkles and said, with compassionate commiseration, "Don’t worry, Grandmother, you’re going to live at least three more years." I decided right then and there that the time had come to take another look at my life, in order to know how I wanted to live those three years that had been so generously granted.

By the time I got to the end of the introduction, I was already loving this book. Margaret Sayers Peden did a really good job, as the great writing shines through from the very first page.

Allende describes the character of Chile and its people, and the show more idiosyncrasies of her own family, through the eyes of an exile. Her family of eccentrics has provided material for her novels since the beginning, when The House of the Spirits began life as a letter to her dying grandfather and based on anecdotes he had told her about his family.

I grew up surrounded by secrets, mysteries, whispers, prohibitions, matters that must never be mentioned. I owe a debt of gratitude to the countless skeletons hidden in our armoire because they planted the seeds of literature in my life. In every story I write I try to exorcise one of them.

Luckily Alejandro was wrong in giving his grandmother 3 years to live, as this book was published over a decade ago, and according to a recent Ted talk, Isabel Allende continues to live a passionate life. show less

When a work is beautiful even in translation, it can do nothing but inspire awe... and so with this. At only 200 pages, it's a briskly-paced outline of the Chile of Isabel Allende's imagination, full of exaggeration and lyricism, and deeply absorbing. There's reminiscing about eccentric relatives, the excitement of the short-lived Unidad Popular government, the regime of fear that was Pinochet's... another element that I found interesting was the reflections on the patriarchal nature of Chilean society. In some ways it reminded me of Simone de Beauvoir, as these reflections too were coming from the perspective of a relatively upper-class woman, except that this book is better written! Ha ha.

No seriously though, there's a lot interesting show more in this book, and I found it so engrossing due to the way it's written. Also, it makes me really want to travel to Chile... show less

My Invented Country is a different kind of memoir. Allende's personal memoir was Paula, but as it says in the title, this one is about Chile. Don't confuse it with a history of Chile either. This is written in a memoir style and is simply Allende's experience of her country. It's the way she remembers things and the way she remembers feeling things. There is history here, but written in a way that reminds the reader that history is experienced by those who live it.

My favorite thing about the book was Allende's tone. The book was tinged with nostalgia and it made her way of writing feel almost playful most of the time. I particularly loved when she talked about being a feminist because it was so on the nose to the way that I have felt show more before. My favorite was this line:

I realized that to wait to be respected for being a feminist was like expecting the bull not to charge because you’re a vegetarian.
Her experience of machismo and patriarchy in Chile was very similar to what I grew up around in Miami. Also that she shared that moment that so many of us feminists have when we learn about the history of patriarchal treatment beyond our own experiences:

When I look back at the past, I realize that my mother was dealt a difficult destiny and in fact confronted it with great bravery, but at the time I judged her as being weak because she was dependent on the men around her, like her father and her brother Pablo, who controlled the money and gave the orders.
When we look at the whole picture, no single generation could really have gotten it's gains without the generation before it which promptly takes those gains for granted while not properly appreciating what the women before them went through. Or, at least, that's how it always looks to me.

Allende talks a bit about the US interfering in Latin American politics, which was and is unacceptable and I hope we never do again except I can't escape the feeling that we could be doing it somewhere at this very moment. We may be learning from our mistakes to not interfere in these kinds of affairs of others (specifically supporting the overthrow of elected governments because we are definitely interfering in other things) but I'm not as optimistic. Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh but we, as a country, can't seem to get it together on when it is or isn't a good time. We kept out of two world wars for too long, only to be told that was a bad policy and then interfered in every conflict since then and that isn't working out for us or the other countries either. But, alas, that's not what this book is about and I apologize for the tangent.

Eventually, Allende had to leave Chile for understandable reasons, much like some of the other women I've read about who fled their own countries. I also understand what her dissenters mean when they say those who fled should have stayed and fought for the improvement of the country. I can't imagine being put into such a situation but there will always be people who do both and I imagine that will consistently breed resentment as well.

Mostly, I loved that this was a memoir about Allende's lived experience in relation to her country, whether in it or in exile. She wrote about her country as she experienced it in her youth and continues to experience it on visits back home. She wrote about her experience in exile from Chile as it relates to being Chilean. All of that just makes me love the title all the more because if I wrote about my experience in the US and what living here is like for me, there would be tons of people coming out to tell me how that's not the real US. I imagine there is at least some similarity to the way other Chileans experience this book, but everyone's experience of their country and their town is different from even the others who live in their homes. At that it all seems that no two siblings ever seem to have grown up in the same house with the same parents either. Calling it her "invented" country simply reminds us not to judge that this is just one experience of Chile. show less

Nostalgic, conversational and irreverent, renowned international, bestselling author Isabel Allende's memoir about her home country of Chile takes the reader on a journey of history and memories. There are a fair amount of hyperbole and sweeping generalizations, and some of her commentary, such as the way she spoke so casually disparagingly of both her family and of Mapuche Indians, was startling, but I appreciated her story, as well as insights into a national psyche you usually don't get to read about in guidebooks. I have previously read many of her books and now feel like I have a better sense of how she came to be who she is.

القراءة لإيزابيل الليندي اصبحت بالنسبة لي كزيارة لبيت صديقة قريبة، اغيب لشهور وأعود واقرأ ، تكتب بذات الحسّ بذات الحبّ والشغف ومهما كان الموضوع الذي ستطرقه فإنها ستكون مقنعة جداً وساحرة لدرجة أننا نمسك الغلاف في اليد اليمنى ونجد أننا وصلنا للطرف الآخر بسرعة وخارج الزمن !

كتبت ايزابيل هذا الكتاب بعد حادثتين متقاربتين ، الأولى ملاحظة عرضية من حفيدها اليخاندرو الذي باغتها وهي تتحرى خريطة تجاعيدها امام show more المرآة، وقال لها مشفقاً : لا تهمتي يا عجوزي ، ستعيشين ثلاث سنوات على الأقل.
حينها قررت ان الساعة قد حانت لتعيد القاء نظرة على حياتها، وتتحقق كيف تريد أن تمضي هذه السنوات الثلاث.
الحادثة الثانية كانت سؤالا من مجهول في ندوة لكتاب الرحلات حالفها الحظ بافتتاحها. سألها الشاب : ما الدور الذي يلعبه الحنين في رواياتها ، وبقيت صامتة للحظة ، حنين . . حسب القاموس : هو ألم أن يرى الانسان نفسه غائباً عن وطنه، هو الحزن الذي تثيره سعادة مفقودة !

وهكذا بدأت رحلتها في كتابة هذا الكتاب ، الذي تحدثت فيه عن تشيلي التي فارقتها كثيراً لكنها ما زالت تعيش بداخلها ، تحدثت عن الوجوه والأماكن والأحداث، إنّ المحتوى لهذا الكتاب يشبه الاحجار الصغيرة الملوّنة التي ملأت الفراغات في كتبها السابقة : باولا وحصيلة الأيام . ما زالت تكتب سيرة ذاتية مبهجة ، وفي ذات الوقت تنقل لنا حالة العالم آنذاك سياسيا واقتصاديا واجتماعيا وفنياً . .

لعلّ اكثر ما يشدني لقراءة ايزابيل التقاطعات بين حياتينا ، في بعض الفقرات اصبت بالهلع لفكرة أن هذه السيدة تقيم على الطرف الآخر من الأرض ، وعاشت حياة مختلفة تماماً عن تلك التي عشتها ، ولكنّها تكتب حديث نفسي لنفسي !

" بالنسبة إلي كان شقاء طفولتي الطبيعي يتفاقم نتيجة كومة من العقد المتشابكة، التي ما عاد باستطاعتي حتى أن اعددها، لكن من حسن حظي أنها لم تخلف جراحا لم يشفها الزمن.
سمعت ذات مره كاتبة امريكية مشهورة من اصل افريقي تقول انها شعرت في طفولتها بنفسها غريبة في اسرتها وبلدتها، وأضافت أن هذا ما يمر به كل الكتاب تقريبا ، حتى ولو لم يخرجوا من مسقط رأسهم.
واكدت انه شرط لصيق بهذا العمل ، فلولا قلق الشعور بالاختلاف ما كان هناك حاجة للكتابة. فالكتابة أولا واخيراً محاولة لفهم الظروف الخاصة وتوضيح فوضى الوجود. هذا القلق الذي لا يعذب الناس العاديين ، بل يعذب الرافضين المزمنين فقط ، الذي ينتهي الكثيرون منهم ليصبحوا كتاباً بعد أن فشلوا في مهن أخرى، أزاحت هذه النظرية ثقلاً عن كاهلي، إذن لستُ مسخاً، هناك آخرون مثلي "


و هنا أيضاً

" جذر مشكلتي كان دائما هو ذاته، عدم قدرتي على قبول ما يعتبره الآخرون طبيعيا، وميلي الذي لا يقاوم لاعطاء آراء لا أحد يرغب بسماعها ، وهو ما ارعب اكثر من خاطب ود ( لا ارغب بالتباهي فهم لم يكونوا كثرا قط ) بعدها وفي سنوات العمل في الصحافة كان للفضول والجرأة بعض الفضائل. فقد اصبحت لأول مره جزءاً من جماعة "

تحدثت ايزابيل عن الخرافات ، عن العائلة ، كرة القدم ، الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية . . واحداث الحادي عشر من سبتمبر .

قراءة ممتعة اتمناها لكم . . show less

Divertente libro in cui la Allenede, che di norma non è tra i miei scrittori prediletti, divaga sui sui ricordi della famiglia, del Cile, dell'esilio, della sua nuova vita negli stati uniti.
Il tutto secondo l'ondivago filo conduttore della memoria, con cose che si accavallano, riflessioni, episodi, dei quali molti sono così mitici, del mito che circonda le leggende familiari, da rendere impossibile accertarne la veridicità
Ma d'altra parte è così che funzionano le memorie familiari, in qualsiasi famiglia, anche in una molto meno pittoresca di quella della Allende.
Il libro si distingue per alcune battute spassosissime, tra le quali trovo memorabile (oltre che veritiera) " ... il punto G si trova nell'orecchio femminile e che è show more inutile perdere tempo a cercarlo più in basso". show less

After decades of exile from Chile, novelist Allende reflects on the Chile of her memories. It looks a lot like The House of the Spirits, even down to the magical realism. Allende left Chile for good during the Pinochet dictatorship, and she has since made California her home. The primary theme of this memoir is nostalgia for a time, place, and people that exist only in Allende’s memory. While the time, place, people, and events are specific to Allende’s experience, nostalgia is a universal feeling that connects Allende with her readers.