Allende Channels Zorro
Isabel Allende's latest book may seem like a bit of a stretch if not a detour for the author of The House of the Spirits and Eva luna. Zorro, yes that Zorro, was released this month.
Two years ago a group of men knocked on her door and told her they held the rights to the Zorro brand and asked her to write a novel about the mysterious masked latino's "back story," Allende told the Guardian.
After protesting that she was a "serious writer" she re-read the old stories and was hooked. "And so I fell in love again with Zorro," she says, "because I had been in love with him when I was a child. He's the father of Batman and Superman. He's the father of all the action heroes with the double personality. Most of those guys have magic tricks. Zorro has only his own skills."
Allende recounts her experience writing this unexpected novel, and of her life in California after living in Chile and Venezuela.
"Her account of Zorro's beginnings as a mestizo child in a California of missionaries and Indians is masterly, a page-turning, bodice-ripping tale of improbable duels, unlikely adventures and dastardly foes set against the grand currents of 18th-century," writes Dan Glaister.