This is precisely what fiction should do"). Now, in Eva Luna, she has written her most ambitious and original work, a book that makes the foreign both familiar and welcoming, a book that confirms beyond any doubt her status as a major literary presence. "My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of these things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory..." This is the voice that carries us through Eva Luna, the assured voice of a naturally inventive storyteller, a woman who relates to us the picaresque tale of her own life (born poor, orphaned early, she will eventually rise to a position of unique influence) and of the people - from all levels of society - that she meets along the way. They include the rich and eccentric, for whom she works as a servant... the Lebanese emigré who befriends her and takes her in... her unfortunate godmother, whose brain is addled by rum, and who believes in all the Catholic saints, some of African origin and a few of her own invention... a street urchin who grows into a petty criminal and later, a leader in the guerilla struggle... a celebrated transsexual entertainer who instructs her, with great tenderness and insight, in the ways of the adult world... a young refugee whose flight from postwar Europe will prove crucial to Eva's fate... As Eva tells her story, Isabel Allende conjures up a whole complex South American nation - the rich, the poor, the simple, and the sophisticated - in a novel replete with character and incident, with drama and comedy and history, a novel that will delight and increase her devoted audience." --