Internationally Renowned Chilean-American Author Isabel Allende to Visit Albuquerque, 11/19

Internationally renowned Chilean-American author Isabel Allende will make a visit to Albuquerque November 19 on her 13-stop United States book tour for her new romance novel of World War II, The Japanese Lover.

Allende will be in conversation with veteran KUNM radio reporter, Carol Boss, who hosts the Women's Focus program.

Tickets are $35 each and include a signed hardcover of The Japanese Lover and a $5 donation to the Albuquerque Public Library foundation.

"We always are pleased to be working with Bookworks and we are excited that such a prominent and influential author will be available to her readers," says Julia Clarke, president of the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation.

In The Japanese Lover, Allende sets her story in 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis. Young Alma Belasco's parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she Alma encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet son of the family's Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair blossoms. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family-like thousands of other Japanese Americans-are interred by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.

Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, The Japanese Lover explores questions of identity, abandonment, redemption, and the unknowable impact of fate. Written with the attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits, The Japanese Lover is a profoundly moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.

Allende won worldwide acclaim when her bestselling first novel, The House of the Spirits, was published in 1982. In addition to launching her career, the book, which grew out of a farewell letter to her dying grandfather, also established her as a feminist force in Latin America's male-dominated literary world. She has since written twenty other books, including the most recent The Japanese Lover.

Tickets are on sale now, available online at http://www.bkwrks.com/allende-tickets or from Bookworks by calling 505-344-8139or in person at the store on 4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW.