Last month, novelist Isabel Allende was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her books have been translated into 35 languages and sold close to 60 million copies around the world. In an interview with Democracy Now, she talked about her literary career and her memories of Chile during the CIA-backed coup.

“Isabel Allende now lives in California. She was born, though, in Peru in 1942 and traveled the world as the daughter of a Chilean diplomat. Her father’s first cousin was Salvador Allende, Chile’s president from 1970 to September 11th, 1973, when Augusto Pinochet seized power in a CIA-backed military coup in Chile. Salvador Allende died in the palace that day. Isabel Allende would later flee from her native Chile and lived in exile in Venezuela.”

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