Isabel Allende probably would not even have embarked on an international promotional tour. A few weeks later and it would have been cancelled.

Nobody was wearing a face mask nor using hand sanitiser and the Coronavirus seemed like a thing that was happening far away and not at all like a real threat. The excited spectators queued on the stairs, we sat next to strangers and laughed out loud, a microphone was passed around the audience. The evenings were still dark and the weather was cold. I saw Isabel Allende in conversation with Jeanette Winterson at The Dancehouse in Manchester as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. Destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world, Roser and Victor will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.Ī masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.My last live cultural experience before lockdown was introduced in the UK was on February 11th.

Through it all, their hope of returning to Spain keeps them going. But they will also find joy as they patiently await the day when they will be exiles no more. Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning, and over the course of their lives, they will face trial after trial. Together with two thousand other refugees, they embark on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile: “the long petal of sea and wine and snow.” As unlikely partners, they embrace exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border.

In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. From the author of The House of the Spirits, this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.

A long petal of the sea goodreads