Years ago, when author Isabel Allende visited New Orleans to research a chapter for her novel, "Zorro," she fell in love.
"I said ‘I'm going to write someday, something about this city,'" said Allende, a writer of epics, memoir, children's novels and historical fiction.
When she learned some of New Orleans' flavors and traditions are relics of when refugees of the Haitian Revolution settled there, she saw her way in. Allende will discuss the book that resulted, "Island Beneath the Sea," at the Atlanta History Center this week. In the book, ties between a slave and her owner become impossible to unravel, even after she flees the brutal conditions in Haiti to start a new life in New Orleans.
Even with her stage set, Allende said she couldn't start the book without a protagonist. "One day -- I don’t know if I had a dream or imagined it or she appeared -- I sort of saw this woman, the slave Zarité," she said. "From then on, I had her voice and everything was easy."
Well, not everything, exactly. Her research into slavery made her physically ill, she said. Only once she'd written the final pages did her symptoms go away. She tries to help curb modern exploitation through her nonprofit, The Isabel Allende Foundation, she said.
Here's what else Allende had to say about research and writing:
On preparation: "Island Beneath the Sea" I researched for four years, and I could have written it maybe a year before, but I wasn't ready. It's a conscious decision. The story starts to build up inside me, and then I decide to write it. There's a moment when it's ready.
On memoir vs. fiction: I like fiction much better. In a memoir, it's not only about me. I can say everything, I don't have any secrets, but in a memoir, but it's more about family and the people around me. How much can I tell, and how much is not mine to tell? In a novel, I can do whatever I want. There's more freedom.
On writing themes: I've been writing for 20-some years, something like 20 books. There are things I repeat. I always have strong women who have nothing and usually have to overcome all kinds of obstacles to get what they want. It could be love, independence, whatever. They finally get it. They finally get it. That seems to be my obsession.
On how her work has changed: Not only literary styles of have changed in almost 30 years, of course, the world has changed. Readers are impatient. They don't like all the details that went into it before. I write in Spanish only, and in Spanish, when I started writing, you could have a sentence that was six lines long. Now you can't have that. They can't follow you. I can't even read my first books.
INFO
Author Isabel Allende signs and discusses "Island Beneath the Sea." 7 p.m. Thursday, May 6. $10, $5 for members, free to Annual Fund donors, reservations required. Atlanta History Center, 130 West Paces Ferry Road N.W., Atlanta. 404-814-4150, www.atlantahistorycenter.org .
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