The Stories of Eva Luna

Isabel Allende’s novel, Eva Luna, was published in 1987, two years before she followed up with The Stories of Eva Luna. In the former, the protagonist, Eva, narrates the story of her life—and that of her love interest, Rolf Carlé—against a backdrop of sociopolitical unrest in Latin America between the mid-1940s and the 1980s.

Eva Luna is a talented storyteller. Throughout the eponymous novel, Eva uses stories to help her understand and cope with the harsh realities of life. She also tells stories to comfort and protect the people around her. Eva is also the narrator of The Stories of Eva Luna, and characters like Rolf, Riad Halabí, Ana and Roberto Blaum appear in both books. The setting of Agua Santa also features in both Eva Luna and a few of the stories in the collection.

Both books are set in a fictional Latin American country that resembles both Chile and Venezuela. The novel unfolds in chronological order so that the context of sociopolitical unrest is ever-present in the narrative. In The Stories of Eva Luna, the stories are not presented chronologically, so the political circumstances of each story are more abstract.