Worth reading: Isabel Allende returns to Alba Trueba and wins the Premio Planeta
Isabel Allende just took the €1 million Premio Planeta by returning to Alba Trueba and the House of the Spirits universe. For writers building a lasting literary world, this is what continuity can still do on the prize circuit.
The new novel is La hora antes del alba, "The Hour Before Dawn." It picks up Alba after the close of the 1982 book and follows her into a new stage of life after the dictatorship. Allende pointed out that she wrote The House of the Spirits exactly 45 years ago. The jury didn't know that when they read it. Every Planeta entry comes in under another name, and hers was submitted as Los que faltan by "Luz Ventura," in a record field of 1,424 manuscripts.
That detail is the one I keep turning over. A world she built four decades ago still won on the page alone, with her name taken off it. Characters you know well enough can carry a second book long after the first one is finished.