Scheherazade and Eva Luna: Problems in Isabel Allende's Storytelling

While childhood reading is always important for writers, Isabel Allende’s recollections of hers have nuances that anticipate the terms of my discussion of the novel Eva Luna (1987) and its sequel Cuentos de Eva Luna (1989). Her early reading already includes a strong sense of adventure, of transgression, the mystery of an absent and unmentioned father (who left behind the books) and the oppression of women.3 Not surprisingly, ‘those first books gave me the sense of adventure, the love for strong characters and deep emotions. I like plots, rich plots, something happening all the time’.4 She was, then, already well prepared when, some time later, a sense of rebellion in a private, secret place against male definition of the prohibited accompanied a growing sexual awareness in Allende’s discovery of the One Thousand and One Nights, which ‘I read in Lebanon, at thirteen, while I hid in my stepfather’s closet’: