“About halfway through and am loving it!”
“The Historical Context. The historical and time settings of Eva Luna are not directly identifiable in the narrative. However, it is clear that the unnamed country is Chile in the second-half of the twentieth century. Many of the events described in the narrative are clearly fictionalized accounts of historical events such as the bloody military coup that resulted in the overthrow of Marxist Chilean President Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973.Indeed, in the novel at the center of the following analysis, the reader can find several clues that prove the semi-historical nature of this literary work. Another important clue of the semi-historical nature of Eva Luna are the constant travels of the main character in the novel. Her wandering nature is a reflection of Isabel Allende's own travels in places like South America, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Uprooted, and unable to find a permanent home, Allende, like the character in her work, seems to be condemned to a life in exile. In real life, Allende still lives in self-imposed exile in California. The references to left-wing guerrillas in the novel are related to the emergence of an armed opposition in Chile in the early 1970s, after the U.S.-backed Chilean military, headed by General Augusto Pinochet, took over the country. Pinochet's rule resulted in the imposition of an authoritarian regime that lasted more than 17 years. In the process, left-wing dissidents were rounded-up, disappeared, or summarily shot. In addition to Allende's works, there are other artistic creations that have documented that dark age of Chilean history. One of them is the movie Missing, starring Jack Lemmon. The other is the most recent Italian film Il Postino (The Postman), released in 1995. The former tells the story of an American who travels to Chile searching for his kidnapped son in the aftermath of the coup of 1973. The latter is an account of the friendship between an Italian postman, and Pablo Neruda (to whom Allende's literary vision has been compared), winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature. ”
