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First American edition. SIGNED by Isabel Allende on half-title page. About fine in fine dust jacket. (A few tiny specks of foxing at edges. )

1990. Uncorrected Advance Proof. New York, Atheneum, 1990. 13.5 x 21cm. 335 pages. Original softcover in protective sleeve. Excellent condition, as new. Signed by Isabel Allende with a drawing of a lower by Allende beside it. The eponymous heroine of Eva Luna returns as the narrator of 23 tales, sumptuous marriages of Chilean writer Allende's earthy characters and her celestial version of magical realism. Although other figures from that novel also reappear (for example, Eva Luna spins her stories at the request of her lover Rolf Carle), this collection is in no sense a sequel: indeed, each piece here can stand alone. Allende's people are warm-blooded, original, memorable. A simple lyricism evokes European emigres to South America; social climbers; outlaws; schoolteachers; Indians; a nearly indefatigable imagination explores the critical moments in these figures' lives. Many of the stories build on the intricate attachments of unlikely lovers, such as a dictator and the foreign woman he abducts or a criminal and a judge's wife. Allende's inventiveness justifies her own comparisons of her literary creation to Scheherazade, and throughout all these short works whispers the mysticism of Eva Luna herself--her well-placed faith in a world of spirits and in the immortality of human love. [From Publishers Weekly]