Isabel Allende is a superstar of Latin American literature alongside Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the most famous women in South America, a recipient of numerous awards, and the author of books translated into dozens of languages, with total print runs that are steadily approaching one hundred million copies. «Eva Luna» (1987) and «The Stories of Eva Luna» (1989) are her early books about the fact that ultimately there is nothing more important in this world than stories. Generals, scientists, partisans, an unrecognized saint, bandits, a circus owner, the inhabitants of a ghost palace… «Eva Luna» is the tale of a storyteller, a novel about an orphan, a maid, a factory worker, a screenwriter, a woman with a tumultuous biography and a vivid imagination. For all the humanity that exists in her and in us, she composes tales, mixing truth with fiction, and her «Stories» comfort the suffering — a dizzying carnival whirl in which love and faith, mad coincidences and fervent passions, much sorrow, laughter, a fair amount of blood, and all that stories are usually made of rush by before us. Here speaks Eva Luna — Oliver Twist, Scheherazade, and Baron Munchausen, a trickster, an underwater stone, a keen witness who will extend a helping hand or simply, by bestowing a curious glance, will remember, keep the memory, and later tell what she has seen. «The Stories of Eva Luna» is being published in Russian for the first time.
