Isabel Allende: "Being a woman and being successful, they don't forgive you for that."

Allende, who will turn 80 in August, looks back and criticizes the envy of her colleagues and the machismo of the 'boom', a club where she was never accepted.

Forty years ago, when she was living in Venezuela, Isabel Allende began writing a letter to her dying grandfather about everything she had left behind in Chile after the coup. That letter ended up becoming The House of the Spirits, the first of almost 30 novels that have made Allende one of the most widely read writers in the world. She now returns with Violeta (Plaza & Janés), another novel-letter that covers the conquests of women in the 20th century.

Does Violeta have anything from her mother?

My mom is the longest and safest love I've had in my life. We were always very close, but we lived apart because she married a diplomat and was traveling, then she went into exile. We wrote to each other every day: first by mail, then by fax and by email.

Read the whole interview here: El Mundo