3.75 stars
I didn't like it as much as her other novels, but it was interesting. She does make you chuckle at times.

Only you can help me in my hard times. Only you Isabel.

قرأت نصف الكتاب تقريباً لكني شعرتُ بالملل خاصة اني قرأت كتابي سيرتها الذاتية سابقاً واغلب مافي هذا الكتاب هو اعادة تدوير لنفس القصص..
غزارة انتاج اي كاتب، تجعل من قراءة كل مؤلفاته امر صعب بل مستحيل بسبب الاعادة الحتمية و اعتياد الاسلوب ..

Allende uses a perfect blend of sorrowful and humorous tones in describing Chile. On almost every page I found a funny description that made me really laugh! This is a great memoir that I suggest to everyone; wherever she's been, you feel as if you're in her shoes.

Invecchiare è un processo lento e subdolo. A volte mi dimentico che il tempo passa - dentro di me non ho ancora compiuto trent'anni - ma, immancabilmente, i nipoti mi fanno scontrare con la dura realtà, quando mi domandano se "ai miei tempi" c'era l'elettricità. Gli stessi nipoti sostengono che nella mia mente esiste un paese dove i personaggi dei miei romanzi vivono le loro avventure. Quando racconto storie del Cile credono mi riferisca a questo paese inventato.

Un’autobiografia che si legge come un romanzo e che ricorda per molti versi lo stesso esperimento già affrontato dall’altro mio grande amore letterario, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, nel suo bellissimo Vivere per raccontarla. Come Gabo, anche la Allende ci svela la genesi di moltissimi dei suoi personaggi, nati dal ricordo di persone e familiari che hanno influenzato il suo vissuto negli anni cileni. Un malinconico omaggio alla sua terra, il Cile, a Santiago, la città in cui è cresciuta, alla sua gente, ai suoi costumi e alla famiglia da cui ha dovuto allontanarsi forzatamente a causa del golpe del 1973. Da quel momento ha vissuto da esiliata, come lei stessa si definisce, portando però sempre nel cuore (e nelle pagine dei suoi romanzi), le contraddizioni di questa terra alla fine del mondo, in cui le donne sono i veri pilastri della società, ma dove vige ancora il patriarcato; in cui la religione cattolica domina ovunque, ma si ricorre ai rituali di guarigione indigeni e gli spiriti muovono oggetti in giro per casa.
Da tutto ciò, la Allende ha attinto il materiale per plasmare personaggi unici e indimenticabili e questa lettura mi ha fatto venire voglia di rileggere tutti i suoi libri. Voto: 4****

Avere Isabel Allende che ti racconta il suo profondo legame con il Cile attraverso la sua vita ed i ricordi mescolati alle citazioni delle sue opere non è cosa da poco.

Non mi ha entusiasmato come altri suoi libri, ma l’emozione che la sua scrittura mi ha trasmesso rimane viva. Insieme, incredibilmente, ai fantasmi dei suoi antenati.

Scritto con leggerezza, semplicità ed ironia. Non sai mai quanto sia davvero inventato; poco secondo me.

It has taken me a while to digest what I want to say about Allende's My Invented Country.
It starts off rather awkwardly with a catalogue of facts, about Chile, its geography and history. Once she gets to the history, we begin to hear a more characteristic voice, at turns wry, funny, horrified and horrifying as she sums up invasion, settlement/appropriation of land, interactions between the colonists and the native peoples, and the mores of the Chile her grandparents and parents lived in and in which she grew up - part of the time.
She mentions in this book that she dreams and writes in Spanish, and for me this was an illumination that explains much about her style. Thinking and writing in Spanish gives her access to memories and images that would be constructed differently in English. I wonder who translates her work into English?
Her strong opinions have driven her from her teens throughout her adult life, especially the rights of women and 'ordinary people' , mostly the poor and dispossessed. They drove her as a refugee from Chile after the coup, first to Venezuela and then to the US. Her outrage at the events of the coup and the repression and brutality that followed leap off the page.
She has a knack of writing about incidents in and periods of her personal life that are often imbued with emotion, but never cloying or embarrassing to read, unlike some other memoirs I have read recently. And of course much of her early family history and eccentric family life has found its way into her novels.
It's not a great prose work, but a book I enjoyed and will remember reading for a long time.

Surprisingly International

You don’t have to be Chilean to enjoy this beautiful memoir, but you will gain an appreciation for Chile and its people after reading “My Invented Country”.

This is the story about how Isabel Allende, one of the most charismatic Latin American authors of our time, came to become the person she is today. Her very personal narrative will take you to a different country and a different era that will (almost) make you feel Chilean.

We follow her steps from the very beginning and learn about where she was born, how she was raised, how she saw the world, how she tried her pen at journalism, how she made enemies, how her country sank, how she immigrated to California, how she became a wife, and how she became a writer.

All of her recollections are very much her own and nowhere does she claim that what she says is to be considered fact; quite the opposite. She admits that memory can play tricks on us and that all she can do is call it as she remembers it, and she does so with all the bells and whistles that come as a result of her feelings and experiences.

Any tale, as uninteresting as it may be, when told by a good story-teller becomes a good tale. I’m not Chilean and I never even thought of Chile as anything other than a country with a good soccer team, but after reading Allende’s memoir, I feel an affinity with Chilean people that just makes me smile every time I meet someone from Chile. As far off as I may be from the truth, at least now I feel I know what they’re about and that makes “me” feel great.

My Invented Country by Isabel Allende is a well-crafted memoir full of humanity, humor and southern flavor. It has awakened my interest in other Latin American countries and it has helped me understand why Latinos can be so similar and yet so opposite at the same time.

بلدي المخترع

تعجبني هذه الكاتبة، دخلت بالنسبة لي منذ قرأت روايتها (ابنة الحظ) نادي كبار الروائيين والذي كانت تفزعني ذكوريته حينها – نعم لازلت أسميه نادي كبار الروائيين رغم وجود أنثى داخله، فقط لأنني أحب وقع الاسم ولا أريد تغييره -، ايزابيل الليندي تكتب بأسلوب خاص جداً، مميز، يمكنك أن تتعرف عليه حتى ولو قرأت كتبها بلا غلاف، إنها تتمدد في النص، تخلطه بذاتها بحيث أنها لا تحتاج إلى رص اسمها إلى جانب العنوان.

وكعادة ايزابيل عندما تكتب، فهي تكتب عن ذاتها أولاً، ��بل أن تكتب عن الموضوع، والموضوع هنا هو بلدها المخترع كما تصفه، البلد الذي يبدو كمزحة حقيقية على الخارطة، ضيق جداً وممتد طولاً بلا عرض، إنه أحد البلدان التي يسهل عليك أن تنساها، أو تتجاهلها دائماً، إن من وضعه على خارطتي أولاً كان ويا للعجب المنتخب التشيلي، أو بالأحرى نجما المنتخب التشيلي في كأس العالم 1998 م (إيفان زامورانو) و(مارتشيلو سالاس)، ثم جاءت بعد سنوات ايزابيل لتمنح تشيلي هوية وخلوداً، إنه قدر البلدان الصغيرة التي يكفي أديب واحد، لتخلد وليعشقها محبو هذا الأديب، إنها بيرو يوسا، وألبانيا كاداريه، بينما تتعملق دول أخرى على الخريطة ولكنها في خارطتك منكمشة كغطاء قارورة.

تشرح الليندي كيف جاءتها فكرة الكتاب، كيف نبتت من سؤالين، أحدهما من حفيدها والآخر من شاب مجهول في ندوة، وأظن أن كل القراء مثلي سيجدون صعوبة في ربط السؤالين واستخراج تشيلي منهما، ولكن هل على الكاتب أن يعبأ بكيف تقفز عليه الفكرة كبابون نشط؟ إن الكاتب يتلقف الفكرة بامتنان كافٍ، يتعمق عندما يكتبها بافتتان، وهذا ما تفعله ايزابيل دائماً.

هكذا نمضي بين السطور والفصول نتعرف على تشيلي والتشيليين، لا كما نتعرف عليهم في كتاب رحلات معقم، حيث كل الصور نظيفة، تعكس شواطئ وغابات التقطتها كاميرات عالية الجودة، وحيث الوجوه بكامل صحتها وجمالها، ولها ابتسامة أوسع من باب قلعة، لا، إن ايزابيل تأخذنا إلى المنازل الضيقة، إلى الأحياء القديمة، حيث يمكن لنا أن نسمع شتائم الجارات، وضجيج الأطباق في منزل لم يأتي العشاء فيه كما يجب، إن الروائي معني بمدينة الناس، لا بالمدينة كمكان، فلذا ستأخذنا ايزابيل إلى عائلتها وماضيها التشيلي الذي تخلت عنه بعد انقلاب 11 سبتمبر 1973 م، عندما قتل عمها الرئيس سلفادور الليندي، واستولى العسكر على السلطة وحولوا البلد الديمقراطي إلى ثكنة عسكرية، يختفي الناس من شوارعها ليموتوا في الأقبية والسجون تحت التعذيب.

إنها رحلة نتعرف فيها على المرأة التشيلية التي قهقهت كثيراً عندما وجدت أنها توصف بين التشيليين بالملكة، وهي الصفة التي تقدم للمرأة باليمين تمهيداً لسلبها كل شيء باليسار، كما نتعرف على الدين في تشيلي والخرافات والأرواح التي نعرفها جيداً من روايات ايزابيل، وقليل من السياسة وخاصة عن الجنرال بينوشيه.

كتاب جميل جداً، مرهف، أضمه إلى كتابيها (باولا) و(حصيلة الأيام) لتكون لدينا ثلاثية حميمية جداً، لا يمكن أن تقرئها من دون أن تغرم بهذه التشيلية الغريبة الأطوار التي لا تزال تصر أن أرواح أسلافها موجودة حولها، حتى وهي بعيداً في كاليفورنيا متزوجة من أمريكي، وتلف العالم كأديبة محبوبة.

The name of Allende and Pinochet in Chile are familiar for my childhood, although details were not prominent. I remember hearing of the "disappeared" who never returned, or returned broken by torture. Reading it at this time increases my concern for our nation.
However, Ms. Allende does not get into politics and the terrors of that regime until the final chapters. Mostly it is a memoir of her country, her people, her embracing of feminism, her finding herself a writer, her move to Venezuela and then her adoption of the United States, and her celebration of the culture into which she was born. It's not a travelogue, but it does give you a bit of a flavor for the country of Chile and its people.
I enjoyed her writing style, learned a few things, found not a few quotes (she has a wonderful dry sense of humor), and enjoyed this book. I look forward now to reading her fiction.

I found the generalizations made by Allende rather offputting for much of this book, even as I appreciated her stories from her childhood in Chile. The last few chapters which filled in much of her adult life won me over, however. I relate to the way she admits to shaping her own story (and that of her native country) in ways that suit her design. We all do it, but how many are comfortable with admitting it? A wonderful book to read on my Chilean adventure.

Ha sido un gusto conocer Chile de la mano de Isabel Allende, siempre es un placer leerla.