Of Love and Shadows
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3.2 • 5 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
**The moving novel from the multi-million-bestselling author of The House of the Spirits and The Japanese Lover**
Irene Beltrán is a force to be reckoned with. As a magazine journalist – an unusual profession for a woman with her privileged upbringing – she is constantly challenging the oppressive regime. Her investigative partner is photographer Francisco Leal, the son of impoverished Spanish Marxist émigrés.
They are an inseparable team, and – despite Irene’s engagement to an army captain – form a passionate connection. When an assignment leads them to uncover an unspeakable crime, they are determined to reveal the truth in a national overrun by terror and violence. Together they will risk everything for justice – and ultimately to embrace the passion that binds them.
Praise for Isabel Allende's Of Love and Shadows:
‘[Allende] can just as deftly depict loving tenderness as convey the high fire of eroticism. And when you’ve successfully mingled sex and politics with a noble cause, how can you go wrong? New York Times Book Review
‘Allende is a born storyteller’ Chicago Tribune
‘The people in Of Love and Shadows are real, their triumphs and defeats are so faithful to the truth of human existence, that we see the world in miniature. This is precisely what fiction should do’ Washington Post
‘We are by turns enchanted and entertained . . . Allende has married the world of magic and political evil most credibly’ LA Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Allende has forsaken the epic multi-generational sweep of her bestselling first novel, The House of the Spirits, for a more tightly focused yet equally satisfying tale of love and political commitment. Irene Beltran, the unconventional daughter of a wealthy family, and Francisco Leal, son of Spanish exiles, are reporter and photographer for a women's magazine in an unnamed Latin American dictatorship. They stumble onto a mass grave where the bodies of people tortured and murdered by the police have been dumped. As their love grows in the shadow of death, Irene and Francisco struggle to bring the men responsible to justice. They win a qualified victory when public outcry and international condemnation, sparked by photographs and tape recordings smuggled out of the country, force the authorities to allow a trial and conviction. But the lovers must flee the continent to avoid reprisals from an enraged government that has no intention of truly altering its policies. The novel ends with Irene and Francisco en route to Spain, where they will make a new life while waiting for democracy to return to their homeland. Allende is a smashing storyteller who brings the most minor characters vividly to life; her absorbing new novel should win her an even wider readership. BOMC alternate.
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