The South Bank Show: Isabel Allende

On Sunday 22 April, The South Bank Show follows the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende as she travels from San Francisco, where she now lives, back to Chile, the homeland she left in 1975. Isabel Allende has sold over 51 million books in 30 languages over the past two decades.

Few living writers receive the critical acclaim, popular following and consistent record of bestselling works that she has enjoyed since the publication of her first and best-known novel, The House of the Spirits, in 1982.

Forced into exile after the overthrow and death of her uncle, President Salvador Allende, in the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile in 1973, she became a novelist, known particularly for her storytelling and her passionate exploration of the human condition.

Melvyn Bragg meets her in Chile’s capital, Santiago, and there explores her relationship with her homeland, the effect her upbringing and exile has had on her writing, her feelings about the Pinochet years in Chile now that the dictator has died, and how she finds it impossible to tell a story without embellishing the truth!

Isabel Allende’s latest novel Inés of My Soul, tells the remarkable story of a real historical figure Inés Suarez, the first Spanish woman to arrive on Chilean shores with the Conquistadors in 1540.

Still leading the way, The South Bank Show is the first ITV1 programme to be available on the internet in both podcast (audio) and vodcast (video) format at itv.com/southbank.