Isabel Allende

Allende was born in Lima, where her father served in Chile's diplomatic corps, and grew up partly in her grandfather's house in Santiago after her parents' marriage ended. She worked for years as a journalist and television personality in Chile, distantly related to President Salvador Allende, whose government fell to General Pinochet's coup in 1973.

She fled to Venezuela with her family and, in 1981, began writing to her dying grandfather rather than visit him in a Chile still under dictatorship; the letter grew into The House of the Spirits, published the following year. She later settled in California, became a naturalized American citizen, and kept publishing at a steady clip, including the picaresque Eva Luna.

She received the National Medal of Arts and Humanities from the United States, and her novels continue to sell in the tens of millions worldwide.