Introduction & Overview of Paula by Isabel Allende

Paula Introduction

Paula published in Spanish in 1994 and English in 1995, is the first nonfiction book by Isabel Allende, one of today's most influential Latin-American authors. An autobiography framed by the author's experience of watching her only daughter's slow death, the book is "equal parts heartbreak, humor and wisdom," as described by Cynthia Dockrell in her review for the Boston Globe. Allende wrote the book while her daughter Paula was in a coma from 1991 to 1992 and uses her writing to preserve memories as she teaches herself to let her daughter go. Like with her first, landmark novel, The House of the Spirits, Allende followed a personal tradition of letter-writing to begin Paula and did not think of the audience: "It was meant to become a journal that I would give to my children and my grandchildren," she said to Dockrell. The book that was never meant to be published...
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