От Чили до далечния Изток на Китай по време на опиумните войни, до далечния див Запад на Калифорния и златната треска. Каква разходка само между съдби и краищата на света. От тези книги, в които трудно можеш да имаш забележка към нещо - безупречна измислена история с повече реализъм от много истински истории.

Ironically, the strength of this book is the very thing that annoyed me by the end. Allende does an amazing job crafting complex characters and weaving their multiple stories together. Her descriptions invoke all the senses and make the reader feel like she/he is actually experiencing mid-19th century gold-crazy San Francisco. Tracing the lives of a half dozen main characters over seven years through three different countries is no easy task, and while Allende mostly handles it well, there are times when there is just a bit too much description at the expense of plot and suspense. Each chapter begins by returning to another subplot and having to fill out this character's life for the amount of time that has passed. Towards the end of the book, when I was really looking forward to having some of the loose ends tied up, these lengthy descriptions became disturbances.

الرواية دي مفاجأة سعيدة والله، حكي وسرد متدفق، مليان حيوية وبترتبط به بكل روحك من مدى لطفه وظرفه وخفته.

Hija de la Fortuna = Daughter of Fortune, Isabel Allende

Daughter of Fortune is a novel by Isabel Allende, It was published first in Spanish in 1998. Isabel Allende says "of her female protagonist in Daughter of Fortune, Eliza, that she might well represent who the author might have been in another life."

Allende spent seven years of research on this, her fifth novel, which she says is a story of a young woman's search for self-knowledge.

In Chile during the 1840's, Eliza Sommers is a young Chilean girl raised and educated by English Anglican siblings Victorian spinster Rose and strict Jeremy Sommers, and their sailor brother John Sommers, who are expats living in the port of Valparaiso, ever since they found her on their doorstep, and taught in the art of cooking by the Mapuche Indian Mama Fresia.

Over most of Part I, Eliza's origins and upbringing, and her maturity are told. Eliza falls in love with Joaquin Andieta, a young Chilean man who is concerned about his mother who is living in poverty. The young couple have an affair, ultimately resulting in Eliza getting pregnant.

Soon, news of gold being discovered in California reaches Chile, and Joaquin goes out to California in search of a fortune. Wanting to follow her lover, Eliza goes to California, with the help of Chinese zhong yi (physician), Tao Chi'en, who later becomes her friend, in the bowels of a ship headed by a Dutch Lutheran captain, Vincent Katz. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه نوامبر سال2002میلادی

عنوان: دختر بخت؛ نویسنده: ایزابل آلنده؛ مترجم: اسدالله امرایی؛ ویراستار غلامحسین سالمی؛ تهران، تندیس، سال1379؛ در431ص؛ نقشه؛ چاپ سوم سال1381؛ چاپ چهارم سال1383؛ چاپ پنجم سال1386؛ شابک9789649198477؛ چاپهای هفتم و هشتم سال1392؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان شیلی در آمریکای لاتین - سده20م

داستان «الیزا»، دختری سر راهی، در «شیلی» است؛ او را دم در خانه ی خواهر و برادری «انگلیسی» تبار، و مجرد و پولدار، با نامهای «رز» و «جرمی» میگذارند؛ «رز»، «الیزا» را فرزند خوانده ی خویش میکند؛ «الیزا» در آن خانواده سرشناس بزرگ، و در نوجوانی، عاشق «خواکین» میشود، و ...؛ سپس به «آمریکا» میگریزد و ...؛

شخصیتهای بسیار «دختر بخت» هر کدام لحظاتی میدرخشند، و سپس از نفس میافتند، و جای خویش را به دیگران میدهند؛ این نوشتار گاه خوانشگر را گاه به یاد تک گویی «مکبث»، در سوگ «لیدی مکبث» میاندازد؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 26/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

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For a work that was first published in 1998 Daughter of Fortune strikes me as something more suited to the 1970s. Don't get me wrong, I love Isabel Allende's work and she is one of my favourite authors, however, at the risk of coming across as an oversensitive zillennial, her mystification of China struck me as rather old-fashioned. The way Allende portrays other cultures and groups relies on clichés. Yes, some of these characters were, for the most part, 'harmless' stereotypes, but nonetheless, they did induce an eye-roll or two on my part (for instance, every indigenous woman from Chile is cuvacious and passionate).

As with many other novels by Allende Daughter of Fortune is very heavy on the telling. There are very few, if any, dialogues, which did occasionally distance me from the events Allende narrated. Still, her storytelling, for the most part, kept me engaged in the characters and their stories.
The novel begins in Chile during the 1840s. Eliza Sommers, a Chilean girl and the novel's central character, is adopted by Rose Sommers, an unmarried Briton. Rose lives with her strict older brother and tries to raise Eliza as a 'proper' Victorian lady. Eliza, however, goes on to fall head-over-heels in love with a Chilean man of 'dubious' character. When her beloved is struck by gold fever and leaves for California, a bereft Eliza will risk her own life to be reunited with him.
The story definitely takes its time, and, the first few chapters are less focused on Eliza than a tertiary character, a certain Jacob Todd who travels to Chile after making a bet. He falls for Rose but she clearly does return his affection. We also read about his friends, Feliciano Rodriguez de Santa Cruz and his wife, whose role in the novel feels rather superfluous. During Part I we also learn more about Rose and her brothers and of Eliza's childhood with them.
The remainder of the novel details Eliza's epic journey to find the man she loves. During this time Eliza becomes acquainted with Tao Chi'en, a shanghaied physician who for a time worked as a cook on a ship captained by Rose's other brother, John. Across two lengthy chapters, Allende recounts Tao's life, from his early days to his marriage and, after his wife's death, of his eventual disillusionment. Once in California Eliza and Tao grow closer and it is their bond that truly makes this novel. Allende, quite clearly, shows that Eliza's feelings towards her paramour lead her to idealize this poco di buono man. Yet, her devotion towards him is such that she is willing to spend years of her life in search of him, passing as a young man in order to travel with more freedom.
The novel is certainly full of drama and Allende frequently falls prey to sappy platitudes (about love, destiny, desire, womanhood).
But whereas I could easily overlook Allende's tendency towards the melodramatic, I had a harder time looking past her clichéd portrayal of China, its culture, and people. When the narrative is relating Tao's youth, Allende, quite out of the blue, feels the obligation of using a metaphor involving rice (when describing a Chinese mother's grief: “the little girl’s accident was like the grain of rice that makes the bowl overflow.”). Tao, who is in his thirties, is described looking as sometimes looking like a teenager, and, “ancient as a turtle”, so that “it was easy then to believe that he had lived many centuries”. Whyyyyyy do we have to compare the one Chinese character to a turtle?! And of course, because he is an East Asian man he has to have “delicate ” hands.
Allende includes many other stereotypes about China, and I just have very little patience for this sort of stuff. It didn't help that Allende includes a plethora of clichés (such as prostitutes with hearts of gold, or Eliza 'rescuing' a Native American boy....come on Allende!).
Yes, there were many beautiful descriptions and Allende clearly researched this period of history but I had a hard time getting to like or care for her characters (who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, judgemental, anti-abortion). While it made sense, given that the story takes place during the 1840s, it made it difficult for me to actually relate or sympathize with the characters. Eliza was beautiful (in an unconventional way, of course), kind, and clever. The classic heroine. Her love for this guy was definitely of the insta-love variety, and while the narrative does point this out, I struggled to understand what possessed her to follow this guy whose blandness is such that I cannot recollect his name.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the development between Tao and Eliza, and it was refreshing to see a Chinese man be not only one of the main characters but the heroine's love interest. I wish the novel had focused exclusively on them, with less of the 'will they won't they' subplot.
Overall, the novel is kind of cheesy and rather dated. Still, fans of Allende who are less 'sensitive' than I am will probably enjoy this a lot more than I did.

رواية رائعة.


تتنقل بنا من تشيلي إلى الصين إلى كاليفورنيا و ذلك بقلم سحري متدفق و تصوير بارع للثقافات المختلفة و الأمكنة و الأمزجة و الإنسان بكل رغباته و نزواته و جشعه و ميله للعنف.
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تأريخ للأراضي التي إستولوا عليها البيض و إندلاع حمى الذهب في كاليفورنيا و التغييرات التي طرأت عليها بعد حضور آلاف المهاجرين إلى تلك البقعة و العنصرية و الصراع العرقي و الطبقي .

و معاناة النساء في عالم ذكوري بشع و شقاء المرأة في عيش الحياة و الوصول إلى الحرية.
و لا ننسى قوة الحب التي تحث على تحدي الأعراف و التقاليد.
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تاو تشين من أحلى الشخصيات الروائية.



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3.5 stars
Confession time! I was cleaning this weekend and came across this book. A book that I thought I had finished reading, but I found a bookmark where I had obviously stopped.
A proper re-read for 2018 was warranted!
The best way to describe Isabel Allende is that she's both poet and painter. Just like a poet, Allende wants her readers to be seduced by all five senses. Like, a painter, Allende makes sure that her readers; with their eyes open or shut are transported back to the time period she's writing about. In this case, Chile and California in the span of years between 1843-1853. That might seem like a short period of time, but remember, there's lots of detail.
Perhaps the biggest gem of Allende's work is that she writes strong women and she puts her women in precarious situations and sees what they will do about them. Both Miss Rose and Eliza are women who both try to overcome the obstacles of their birth. The only drawback of the story was that it just ended without feeling like the end.

بسبب هذا الكتاب وقعت في غرام ايزابيل الليندي، رواية تاريخية تشيلية ممتعة، تحكي قصة حب ومغامرة نسائية في أزمنة ذكورية متصلبة

This is a bodice-ripper with literary pretensions.

Set during the early years of the California Gold Rush, it contains every trope imaginable: the tough-as-nails bordello Madame with a heart of gold; the "celestial" Chinaman with his shaved forehead, opium pipe, and powdered rhino horn; the swarthy, piratical ship's captain with all the connections who serves as convenient repository for everyone else's secrets; the handsome but violent Latin bandito who cuts a path of destruction through the Wild West territory but spares women from molestation. This is not a comprehensive list.

When John Jakes and James Clavell churned out similar novels in the 1970s, I was all in. In fact I devoured those series. I was also a teenager with a limited world view who saw nothing wrong with such stereotypical fantasies. As nostalgic as this Allende novel made me at times, it was also disconcerting to re-visit a similar genre published several decades later.

3.5 stars

من العبث أن نرمي بأنفسنا في متاهات ونحن نعرف مسبقاً بأننا هالكون لا محالة , لكن لو كان لنا قوة إلزا سوميروز قد نجد في روحنا المغامرة سبباً للمجازفة , الشخصيات التي تقدمها إزابيل لنا في حياتنا هي خليط غريب من المشاعر المتناقضة قوية رقيقة روح المغامرة مدفونة كــ كنز القراصنة في أرواحهم , أحببت إزابيل الليندي كثيراً ربما لأنها تتحدث عن شيء طالما بحثت عنه ( المغامرات ) أعلم أن الواقع بعيد مختلف عن سطور الروايات لكنها مستمدة بشكل أو بآخر من الواقع مع بعض التعديلات , الروح القوية التي تسربها إزابيل من شخصياتها , مثل إلزا هي ما أحببته حيث أنها تقدم كل شيء من أجل من تحب و لو بدا أن ما تقدمة حماقة كبيرة فإن الإمدادات التي تستنزف ذاتها أخيراً ستقف لأنه ببساطة لا يحق لأحد أن يأخذنا بالرغم منا لنصبح ذات يوم على لا شيء وكأننا تلاشينا تماماً الطموح زائد الجرأة ستجعل منا آخراً كما أحببنا أو حلمنا أن نكون يوماً ما ,

أحب تلك الكتب التي حتى وإن كانت متخيلَة تضيف شيئاً من القوة بداخلي وتعلمني أن أكون كما أحب دائماً من أجلي فقط لأن لا أحد يستحق .

من ابنة الحظ :
لست أدري في أي منعطفٍ على الطريق أضعت الشخص الذي كنته فيما مضى* !!!

الأحداث كأنك تبحث عن إبرة وسط كومة قش ، لكن رغم ذالك استمتعت برواية ، التفاصيل بالنسبة لي لعبت دور الملح في الطعام.

قرأت هذه الرواية عشان التقييمات عليها كانت عالية جداً..بس الحقيقة أنا منبهرتش يعني..
قصة حب تافهة ..أحداث مملة وكنت عاوزاها تخلص بأي شكل من كتر الزهق اللي أنا فيه!
فيها تطويل بزيادة لدرجة إن كان ممكن نشيل ١٠٠ صفحة منها ومكانتش الراوية حتتأثر أوي..

الرواية هنا تعتبر الجزء الأول من ثلاثية و في الغالب كدة مش حقرأ بقية الأجزاء..
أول قراءة لإيزابيل الليندي وبداية غير مشجعة بالمرة..بس أعتقد قلمها أكيد محتاج مني محاولة أخري يوماً ما..