In the second in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth in this centenary year of the BBC, Harriett Gilbert talks to world-famous Chilean writer Isabel Allende about her extraordinary novel, Eva Luna.

Eva Luna is the story of an orphan who beguiles the world with her remarkable visions, triumphing over the worst of adversities and bringing light, as her name would suggest, to a dark place.

As Eva comes of age and tells her tale, Isabel Allende conjures up a whole complex, unidentified, South American nation— filled with a cast of unforgettable characters, rich, poor, simple, sophisticated, oppressors and oppressed. Against this turbulent background, love, politics and tragedy all play their part in Eva’s life and help shape her into the unforgettable revolutionary and storyteller she becomes.

A novel that celebrates the power of imagination to create a better world.

(Picture: Isabel Allende. Photo credit: Lori Barra.)