The first part of my life ended on September 11, 1973. That day there was a brutal military coup in Chile. President Salvador Allende, the first Socialist President ever elected democratically, died. In a few hours a century of democracy ended in my country and was replaced with a regime of terror. Thousands were arrested, tortured or killed, many disappeared and their bodies were never found. The Allende family fled and those who were abroad could not return. I was the last one to leave. I stayed until I couldn't stand it anymore and eventually I fled with my husband and our children.

We went to Venezuela, a green and generous country. It was the time of the oil-boom, when black gold flowed from the soil like an inexhaustible river of wealth. However, I failed to see the charm of Venezuela. I was paralyzed by nostalgia, always looking south, waiting for the end of the dictatorship. It took me many years to get over the trauma of exile. I was lucky, I found something that saved me from despair: I found literature. Frankly, I think I would have not become a writer if I had not been forced to leave everything behind and start anew. Without the military coup I would have remained in Chile, I would still be a journalist and probably a happy one. In exile literature gave me a voice, it rescued my memories from the curse of oblivion, it enabled me to create a universe of my own.

My fate changed on January 8, l981. That day we received a phone call in Caracas that my grandfather was dying. I could not go back to Chile to bid him farewell, so that evening I started a sort of spiritual letter for that beloved old man. I assumed that he would not live to read it, but that didn't stop me. I wrote the first sentence in trance: Barrabas came to us by sea. Who was Barrabas, why did he come by sea? I didn't have the foggiest idea, but I continued writing like a maniac until dawn, when exhaustion defeated me and I crawled to my bed.
- What were you doing? my husband mumbled.
- Magic, I answered.
And indeed, magic it was. The following evening after dinner, again I locked myself in the kitchen to write. I wrote every night, oblivious to the fact that my grandfather had died. The text grew like a gigantic organism with many tentacles and by the end of the year I had 500 pages on the kitchen counter. It didn't look like a letter anymore. My first novel, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS had been born. I had found the only thing that I really wanted to do: write stories.

Still I could not return to Chile. The military dictatorship would last seventeen years. In l983 I published another novel, OF LOVE AND SHADOWS, based on a political crime committed in Chile, and two years later a third one, EVA LUNA, a book close to my heart, because it's the life of a storyteller. It was followed by THE STORIES OF EVA LUNA a collection of 23 short stories, all of them about love, although sometimes love is so twisted, that it's hard to recognize it.

Meanwhile the relationship with my husband had deteriorated completely. We were in Venezuela and not in Chile, so we could get a divorce. It was a friendly divorce, whatever that is.