[captioning made possible by democracy now!] >> from pacifica, this is democracy now! >> there are novels and memoirs tell of families, magic, romance, oppression, violence, redemption all mixed up. but in her hands, the big became familiar in human. >> president obama awarded the presidential medal of freedom to isabel allende. in a democracy now! special, we spend the hour with isabel allende, one of the greatest novelists of the americas today. >> writing is such a commitment, you probably know this, writing a such a commitment it is like falling in love.

you're totally immersed in it. nothing else matters. you have to have all your time and energy put into that. so it is a little scary. >> isabel allende for the hour. all of that and more coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today we spend the hour with isabel allende, one of latin america's and the united states' greatest novelists. she's the author of 20 books, including "the house of the spirits," and her latest is a mystery novel based in the bay area titled "ripper." her books have been translated into 35 languages and sold over 57 million copies around the world. isabel allende now lives in california, but she was born in peru in 1942 and traveled the world as the daughter of a chilean diplomat. her father's first cousin was salvador allende, chile's

president until 1973 when the augusto pinochet seized power in a military coup. salvador allende died in the palace that day. she would flee and live in exile in venezuela. on monday, president obama awarded her the presidential medal of freedom. >> when isabel allende learned her grandfather in chile was dying, she started writing him a letter. she returned to it until she realized she was asked the writing her first novel. she never really stopped. her novels and memoirs tell a families, magic, romance, oppression, violence, redemption, all mixed up. but in her hands, the big became familiar and human. exile from chile by military junta, she made the u.s. her home.

today she created a foundation to honor her daughter that helps families worldwide. she begins all of her books on january 8, the day she began the letter to her grandfather years ago. write what should not be forgotten. >> president obama speaking at the presidential medal of freedom ceremony at the white house monday. in april, i conducted a public interview with isabel allende at the america society council of the americas here in new york. shortly after the publication of her latest book "ripper." we start with the day should begins every book. why do you start your books on january 8? >> discipline. well, i started because my first book i was living in venezuela and my grandfather was dying in chile. i started a letter for him on january 8, 1981 that became "the house of the spirits." then i started the second book

in the third book of the same date. but my life was really complicated with a lot of stuff that has nothing to do we really with writing. but writing brings it to me and so out of discipline, i have to set out several months a year in which i don't see anybody, i don't travel, i don't do anything but writing. in order to clear the calendar, i need a day to start. writing is such a commitment. you probably know this. it is such a commitment it is like falling in love. you're totally immersed in it. nothing else matters. you have to have all of your time and i your energy put into that. it is a little scary. if i didn't have a day to start, i would be procrastinating forever. waiting. >> i said we would start off talking about "ripper" but we will use you as the person who engages in free association and

never sticks to what you say, so let's stick with that first january 8 when you began "house of the spirits." talk about the writing of the first book. no one had read your book -- >> i had no work. >> how did you end up outside your country chile? >> we had a military coup in 1973 and out life of chileans changed, some for the better, many for the worst. many chileans left the country. i was one of them. i did not want to live in a dictatorship. so i left the country and a was always thinking that i would go back soon, that it was a very temporary situation. so i looked for a country that would -- where i could speak the language, because i was a journalist, and i thought i could work as a journalist -- in spanish, only -- in a country that had a democracy and where it was possible to work.

the only country in latin america at that point that offer that was venezuela. venezuela was rich, generous, open doors for everybody who wanted to come to work, spanish-speaking. and i thought i could work as a journalist, which i could not, actually. but that is how i ended up in venezuela. i ended up doing all kinds of odd jobs before i could ever envision the idea of starting to write. >> how did you do it? you had your family there. >> i had my former husband and two children, but my husband got a job in the middle of the jungle and i saw him every two months, more or less. my life was very lonely. it wasn't leading anywhere. everything was flat for me. i was ready 39 years old. i hadn't achieved anything. i felt my life was over, really, until this miracle happened that i started writing this book.

>> and so you wrote every night after dinner? >> yes, i worked 12 hours a day, two shifts in the school. i would leave home to be at school at 7:00 in the morning, then come home after 7:00. after we had dinner, i would go to the kitchen and write on a portable typewriter. there were no computers then. when i think that i wrote 560 pages of the manuscript on a portable typewriter with carbon paper, i don't think i had carbon paper, just one copy the first copy. if you needed, for example, i needed to change her name because my mother said, why did you give the villain the name of your father? [laughter] i said, who cares, mother, you divorced him a long time ago. she would not take it. i had to find another name that

had exactly the same number of letters selectively every page back into the machine and type the name. that is how we worked then. it is incredible. >> and so you finished your manuscript. you had hundreds of pages. what did you do with them? >> i showed it to my mother. my mother said, i suppose this is a novel, not very good, but it is a novel. and so she sent it to several friends that she had or publishers in argentina, a publisher in venezuela. nobody even answered. never got a rejection letter, because nobody read it. and then one day, the person who worked in one of the publishing houses, she was a receptionist, called me and she said, no one is going to read this manuscript, it is a dirty, long manuscript, by an unknown female. who is going to read this thing? you need an agent. i did not know agents for literature existed. i thought they were only for sports.

she said, there is one in spain that is very famous. she gave me the name. i found the address and sent it to barcelona. and she published the book. she got the book published. >> so it was first polished in spanish in spain. >> she got it published because the publishing house wanted a book and she said, i will give you the book if you take this other woman. nobody wanted me. i would say september when the book was published. by october, everybody -- every publisher in europe wanted the book. it was a sudden success. it was really a miracle. >> and it has sold millions and millions of copies around the world. >> where are the millions of

millions of dollars, i ask all the time? according to the numbers, i've sold 60 million books. let's say i would get one dollar per book -- not even $.10. >> so that gave you confidence to write your second book? >> well, carmen said, this is a very good book, but everybody can write a good first book because it is the story -- their story, everything they have experienced and everything they remember, everything that is important to them will be in the first book. the writer is proven in the second book. so immediately, started to write a second book to prove to her i could be a writer. >> and so this book, you chose to be a novel, and you wrote novel after novel yet you were a journalist in chile -- >> a lousy journalist. really bad. >> why did you choose novels?

>> because it was much easier than being a journalist. being a journalist, yet to deal with facts, and i'm terrible with facts. my daughter-in-law is sitting there and she said, i could never say the truth. because i'm always telling a story. the stories are so much better than the truth. why would i ruin the story with the truth? so as a journalist, i wasn't very good, but i was never caught in all my lies. i feel much more comfortable with fiction. >> and yet when you are in chile , the great poet asked you to interview him. >> pablo asked me to go visit him where he lived. i thought it was for an interview. we had lunch. then i said -- the press had called me for an interview. i had washed my car, had a new tape recorder.

then after lunch, i said, well, i'm ready to do the interview. what interview? i said, well, can to interview you. he said, i would never be interviewed by you. you are the worst journalist in this country. why don't you switch to literature? he was right, but it took me a very long time because that was 11 days before he died. that was in august -- 22 days. in august 1973, right before the military coup. i wrote the first book in 1981. >> what was his funeral like? what was the response in the country in this extremely heated time? was the funeral before the coup? >> no, he died 11 days after the coup. it was a time of terror for the people of the left. all of the communists were

outlawed, so they were either running away trying to get out of the country or in hiding or arrested. the people -- it would of been a national funeral. if he had died before, he would've had three days of mourning for the country. but that day it was raining. i remember the day exactly because i was there. few people dared get out and follow the body to the cemetery. the ambassador of sweden, a very tall man, black long coat was following -- was at the funeral. i thought, because there were military machine guns on both sides of the street, and i thought, if they fire, they will not kill this guy. he is an ambassador. so i was clinging to his coat and walking behind him and praying the nothing would happen.

as we passed a construction site, one of the workers shouted -- when i think about this, i'm so emotional. he shouted and said, "pablo --" everybody responded. and he said -- and everybody shouted. that would mean death at that point. i don't know how many people there were, maybe 150. i don't know. 200. we were walking behind. it was a very emotional moment. >> isabel allende, the chilean american novelist. we will return to my interview with her in a moment. ♪ [music break]

>> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as we return now to the chilean american novelist isabel allende

, who received the presidential medal of freedom november 24 at the white house. earlier this year, i interviewed her at the american society council of the americas. let's talk about salvador allende. how are you related to him? >> vaguely. he was the first cousin to my father. my father left my mother when i was three. he really abandoned her in peru with two babies and my mother gave birth to my brother at home a few days later. so my mother came back to chile and i grew up in the house my grandfather. i never saw my father. he is dead now. i only saw him once in the morgue when i had to identify the body. but i could not identify the body because i've never seen him before. he was related to salvador allende.

after my father left, the only person from the allende family that was in touch with my other constantly was the daughters that were my cousins. and then my mother, i will say that she married my stepfather because in chile, there was no divorce. they were "married", they started having sex. by the time salvador allende was president, my stepfather was ambassador in argentina. he would come every two months, more or less, to report to the government. so i got to see more of salvador allende while he was president, but not much as i was growing up. >> and so that day, the other september 11, 1973, where were

you when salvador allende -- >> in santiago. it was a strange day because people were talking about a coup , but we did not know what it was. i tried to explain to americans, and it is hard for you to envision the possibility that the army would take over the government. that people would be arrested him and the people would be killed, tortured. that the president would die, that they would bomb the white house, the congress would be eliminated, political parties would be eliminated. it is hard to imagine, so it was very hard for us to imagine that something like that would happen. many things led to the coup. the country was broken, was in chaos before the coup. so it was predictable that something like that would happen, also the cia was involved. but we did not know.

and the day of the coup, i got out of the house and went to work and the streets were empty except pockets of workers that were waiting for buses that never came. and military trucks. that is all you could see in the streets. and very soon you could hear planes and helicopters. i went -- we do not have a phone, so i went to a friends house to phone my mother and get the children from school. my children are walking to school. i said you have to get the children. i went to this friend's house and this woman was horrified because her husband had left early, he was a teacher downtown santiago close to the palace. i said, i will go and pick him up. i don't know what i was thinking. i went in my car.

it was a little car painted with flowers. it was camouflage. [laughter] i had painted it with flowers because the only car that was made in chile came only in gray and light blue. so you park your car, and you would never find it again. you would spend an hour trying to find your car. so i painted it with flowers. also, everybody else in chile knew it was my car. i went with this car all the way downtown santiago in the middle of the military trucks to pick up this guy, this teacher. i got to the institute and all the doors were opened. there was nobody there. soldiers running one way and the other. i just parked the car and walked into the institute and the guy who was there, a receptionist or someone, a janitor or someone,

said he is there on the roof. i went to the upper floor. from there, we saw the bombing of the palace. and we heard in his little radio the last words of salvador allende. so i remember that day vividly, because this man who was this obese man to cry like a baby. he was devastated. i could not quite understand what was going on. it was so unbelievable that i did not get it. and then i got in the car and we used back roads and i got him home somehow. i got there late. my mother in law picked up the kids. fine until wemed started hearing the news. we had two days of curfew that

you could not go out at all. i did not have a phone. it was such a strange thing. >> did you understand that your cousin had died? >> i did understand because i had a tv program at the time. and the producer of the program was married to one of the firemen that took the body of allende out, so he saw him and he told his wife and his wife told me. and so i knew the same day. i went to my mother-in-law's house to tell my parents. they already knew. the world knew. in chile, we did not know. only one station was still working. >> was there a funeral for salvador allende? >> no, no, no. the mexican government sent a plane to rescue -- to offer asylum to the family and the closest -- the people who had

worked with him very closely. those who had not been arrested. most of them had been arrested. tensions stayed until they placed the body in a provisional, unmarked tomb. it stayed there for many, many years. and then -- later, much later, after 30 years, the body was properly identified and properly buried. >> so the funeral of pablo neruda came after the death of salvador allende? >> yes, and that is why people were shouting salvador allende, presidente. >> that clearly has so informed your work been a backdrop, even though they are novels. >> it is. i totally think if i had stayed in chile, i would not be a writer and a was to be a lousy

journalist, but a very happy one. many lives changed in chile, not only with the coup, but before when salvador allende was elected. it was a horrible situation for many people in chile. half the country did not support the government. from a distance, you can see both sides and understand that what happened was the consequence of allende being elected, during the time of the cold war when the united states was never going to allow a socialist government -- they had cuba, so they would never allow it. >> "maya's notebook" and the characters she meets when she goes to chile? >> it is a strange book because

the idea is a girl, teenager, who gets in trouble, and deep, deep trouble. the inspiration was my granddaughter nicole who was 15 at the time -- gorgeous. she looked like jennifer lopez at 15 and she had the brain of an eight-year-old, and a boyfriend from hell. so we were horrified. we thought this girl would never make it into adulthood because she would get in all kinds of -- not deep trouble, because the father and her mother was watching carefully. >> her mother is on the front row. >> my son is a computer geek, so he hacked everything and always catch nicole right on the edge when she was going to do something really stupid. the father was waiting. he had hacked the computer.

>> maya had her own nsa watching? he would read every keystroke? >> and now she is at nyu. she is on the volleyball team. she has a wonderful boyfriend. everything is fine. but we were scared. so i thought, if i write a book about all of the things that could happen to nicole, they won't happen. because it doesn't work that way. it is the other way around. if i write about it, it is fine. but if you write about it and it won't happen. i thought, i'm going to exercise all the evil that could happen to nicole by writing horrible book. so i have this horrible teenager that gets into deep trouble. and then she is a grandmother, of course, is a wonderful grandmother -- [laughter] so smart, chilean, chilean exile, just by coincidence. and this grandmother saves the

girl by sending her all the way to the southern part of chile. >> what is the trouble she got in, maya? >> everything. she started with petty theft and marijuana, horrible boyfriend. then she ends up in las vegas being pimped by a gang of drug addicts and drug dealers. she ends up on the streets of las vegas and destroyed. there her grandmother picks her up. finds her, finally, this wonderful grandmother. [laughter] and she finds her and sends her to the southern part of chile. why would she sent her there? the only person she can ask a favor, taking care of this preacher, a man, and who is this person? i started creating the story and that is the other part of the book, the book that happens in chile. the person who rescues her is someone who is a past linked to the time of the military coup.

>> tell us why there? >> it is a magical place. it was sort of disconnected from the continent for a very long time. it was the last part of the territory that became part of the republic. it was attached to spain for a very long time and very isolated with the worst weather in the world according to darwin -- these are not my words. so the winter is very long and hard. the people who lived there for centuries for just the people who were born there. nobody went to chiloa except a few crazy scandinavians or germans, but no chileans. then it became fashionable for chileans to go. now it has changed completely.

it has a main island in many small islands that when they tide is up, they are disconnected, but when the tide is down, sometimes you can walk from one to another. it is very strange place with its own ecology, its own beliefs, customs. because the winter is so long, life happens around an iron stove that is always warm. winter and summer in the middle of the house. everything happens there. people drink and tell stories. it is magical. i spent time there. i thought, where would i center -- send her that is like the end of the world, where the gangs from las vegas will never find her? chiloa.

>> and since the cia met have been involved, the disconnect was very important because she was attached to all of her gadgets, like so many young people. >> yes, the worst punishment for her was to leave the cellular phone behind and the internet. there's only one internet cafe, and she doesn't even have the money for the internet cafe. i had fun writing this story because of the research and it was wonderful. we went with lori and my son and my has end and we spent some time with a great guide that took us all over and told us all the stories. we even ended up in a cave with the witches. they are these beautiful young women who get together. they call themselves [speaking spanish] it is like a circle of women. it is very intimate.

they call it [speaking spanish] it is almost underground, dark and magical. all of the stories are just great. >> this issue of drugs is one that touches you closely at home. with nicole, you wanted it not to happen. can you talk about the own parallels in your family? >> unfortunately, i do not have to research any of the drugs, any of the drug world in the book. my husband has three biological children, two of them have already died of drug-related causes. jennifer, his daughter, and recently his son. his oldest son is also using, and he is alive, but he doesn't have much of aife. i've seen the devastation of drugs to the person and to everyone around for the family, the community, everybody.

in this country, and in most countries, drug addiction is treated -- penalized, treated like a crime. it is a matter of public health. and it is not treated like public health. and i have seen 80% of the problems of my stepchildren have had is because they've had to deal with the fact that drugs are illegal. therefore, they spend time in prison and jail, they buy that and they inject. it has been brutal. >> when i saw you last, it was to talk about "maya's notebook." harley had just died. he is not wanted you to write about him when he was alive. can you describe the book and

what you had to do? >> i wrote a memoir that is not much about me, but about my little tribe that i put together with -- and now it is gone. because all of the kids went to college. disappeared. but at the time, this little tribe was my life. i wrote about many people in the family, and i wrote about harley because he had been doing but he haddrugs, been in rehab and he was clean. he was clean for several years. it was the time of redemption. i thought it was a beautiful story of hope thateally a person could have redemption, could be rehabilitated. and actually, he lived some kind of life for many, many years until he started using again and then he died. but at the time, he didn't want to appear in the book as a drug addict. he was right, in that sense, because once you're in a book,

you're forever in a photograph, you know? i don't know, like frozen in time. of course he didn't want to have that portrait him. i had to rewrite the whole book to take them out because it like he was in one chapter, he was all over the book. >> how did you feel at the time? you must confront that another situations, if someone feels though your writing fiction, perhaps it is true than fiction and they don't want to be included. >> i always take them out. there is a limit. what stories are mine to tell and which are not, which stories belong to other people, you cannot ruin somebodies life because you want to write a story. i always joke and say if i have to choose between a member of my family and a story, i choose the story, of course.

in truth, i don't. i'm careful. i always show them the manuscript and if someone did, thatike hardly he doesn't want to be there, i take him out. what i don't do is change things. i can add things, but i don't change the tone or my vision of what is going on. if you don't want to be there, that's fine. amazingly, everybody wants to be more in the book than less. [laughter] how much are you going to tell about one person? you have to choose. >> so you did include them in the next book. >> no -- >> at any point in a new your books did you bring him back in >> no, i haven't, and i will not because the last -- when he told me he did not want to be in my book, we never talked about it again.

that was his last statement about it. >> does your husband have the same privileges? >> what do you mean? >> does he find there are characters like him in the book? >> all the time. he is so proud of it. i wrote a book that is loosely based on his life. he goes around telling everybody that it is his biography. >> he autographs the book? >> of course. he is very proud. he is such a character. he has no shame. he is never embarrassed about anything. it is just amazing. when harley said, i don't to be the book, willie got mad and said, why not? i said, willie, he is your son and he has a right to be the book or not. he was completely against the idea that i should show the manuscript to people.

thank god he doesn't write memoirs. it would be awful. >> isabel allende, the chilean american novelist. we will return to my interview with her in a moment. ♪ [music break]

>> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as we return now to the chilean american novelist isabel allende . on november 24, she received the presidential medal of freedom at

the white house. she is most well-known of all of her books for "house of the spirits." earlier this year, i interviewed her at the american society council of the americas. i asked her about her decision to write her latest book, a mystery novel. >> it wasn't my idea at all. in 2012, 9/11, i wasn't feeling that great, feeling age was weighing on me. i decided i was going to retire and have a great life, finally, you know, instead of working all day. and my agent said, no, you can't retire. why not you write a novel with your husband who's a crime novelist? if you have not read him, please, do. he would love it. so we started talking with willie about the possibility of writing a book together. of course, we ended up fighting

terribly and nothing happened. in january 8, 2012 came and i start all my books on that date. i went where i work with nothing, just the idea of a crime novel and nothing else. so then i started showing up in front of the computer in the universe conspires to make it happen. first, i saw my granddaughter playing a game, a role laying game called "ripper," online. i thought, i'll use a bunch of kids that play this game to be my detectives. and then i attended mystery writers conference and i learned how to kill people -- which is fascinating. there are many, many ways you can kill without being caught. actually, if you are caught, you're really stupid. there are many ways of doing it without being caught. >> can you tell us five easy ways?

undetectable ways? >> poison is a wonderful way. pushing people out of cars is an excellent way. or the metro or the freeway. there are many ways. i could give you a class. the chronicle called me "licensed assassin." and now my husband that thinks he is a better writer -- at least of crime novels, is always looking over his shoulder, always terrified. >> in fact, a number of the people in your book for somehow related to your husband willie, either carrying his book, related son of the novelist. >> i paid homage to him because there's a guy called samuel hamilton. in my book, i have his son who is just like his father solving crimes also.

he did not know that. i dedicated the book to him when he read the manuscript, he found his character in the book. he was so touched. i don't think i've ever been loved more than when he read that. >> talk about writing this mystery novel and the kind of research you did for it, and how it is different from writing your novels. >> well, i have been writing a lot of historical novels. they require huge research. you have to be so careful with every detail, because historians are watching and it will find any little mistake. the last historical novel i wrote was "island beneath the sea" four years of research about slavery. the worst possible subject. i was sick with it. when i wrote "ripper," i had a research about how to kill people. it is fun.

it is not slavery. i had this feeling of writing with a light heart, tongue-in-cheek, having fun. even the research was fun, because the people i asked, the people that helped me with the research, were fun, too. for example, dr. lyle, a very funny man. he is an expert in all forms of forensic medicine. he has a website. you can even look at the website. and a blog. he gets questions. so i would read the questions and get murders. for example, one question from one person said, dr. lyle, if i inject a blood thinner and my victim and then i stabbed her 13 times in a hangar upside down in the shower, with the blood continue into the bathtub? isn't that wonderful? absolutely wonderful.

i never would have come up with that. the idea you can shoot poison that has been frozen in the shape of a bullet and you shoot someone and it doesn't leave a mark in a penetrates the skin, and the person doesn't die immediately, so it cannot be connected to you. just come to me if you need to eliminate somebody. i can tell you 1000 ways of doing it that are elegant. >> but it was not only how to kill that you researched, but a lot of your story takes place at a holistic health center, how to heal. >> that healing center, i did not have to make it up. i did not make up anything. most of this really happens. i received north beach, the italian neighborhood in san francisco. there's a holistic clinic, the

healer, is based on a friend of ours who lives in argentina. she is the healer that was the model for the book. now all of the things that they do in these holistic clinics, they do in san francisco. my husband does it. he was diagnosed by mistake with a terminal illness, so there was nothing that traditional medicine could do for him, and he started doing all kinds of alternative medicine. so now i am an expert in all kinds of stuff. yoga, crystals, you name it. astrology. everything can be used. supplements and herbs and sacred water that you bring from brazil and all cans of stuff. >> have you tried any of this? >> yes. he's alive. >> i'm sorry?

>> my husband is alive. he should be dead. should be dead, but i think he has outlived his death sentence for like six months. thanks to all of this holistic stuff. >> aromatherapy? >> of course. he is completely allergic to perfumes. i cannot wear cologne. but he wears a string with a medallion, with perfume, aromatherapy thing, every day. for example, jasmine is for one thing, geranium or some other. sometimes he mixes it. he smells like a whore. the whole house smells. i'm not into aromatherapy. >> you also have a character in "ripper" where you had to a lot of research into soldiers who come home.

in fact, ryan is in the special forces. >> navy seal. i have a person who works in the foundation, adorable, complete hippie, sarah, who is a great researcher. i said i needed a soldier. i don't know anything about the military. i really needed to get all the information. in 24 hours, she got me a new navy seal that was very to talk. they're very secretive. we flew together to washington and spent three days with him. and he gave me the character. i did not have to invent anything. >> explain who ryan is and his struggles with ptsd. >> a former navy seals who had to retire because he was terribly wounded, he lost his leg. he has posttraumatic syndrome. he is obsessed with an incident that happened in afghanistan in

which he was involved. he killed a family. of course, it was in operation that did not work out. what do you call it? the story is wonderful, the story of the guy in the book. then i added the dog, because i am a dog lover. we have the navy seals -- well, the military, i think afghanistan alone, like 2300 dogs, war dogs. these are very special dogs that cost a fortune to train. they are considered like soldiers. they have all the military honors as soldiers. it is very interesting. >> how do come up with your names? >> this is how i came up. many years ago, i had to carry a

flag in the olympics. by mistake. they made a mistake and i ended up carrying the flag -- with other people. the flag is huge. i was carrying the flag with a bunch of people and i was considered a vip. this is what happened. it was the same week that some danish illustrators had done an illustration of mohammed. the muslim world was enraged. this was the time of the olympics. the security had to be reinforced. of course, they did not trust the italian security -- i would not, either. so they imported it from germany. so these german bodyguards came. the contrast between the german bodyguards and the rest of the italian people was just fantastic. i was assigned a bodyguard

called thorsten. this very big german policeman dressed in black leather with all kinds of microphones, guns and walkie-talkies, you name it. he looked terrifying, and he had the soul of a dancer. a really soft person, wonderful. we became friends. he had a dog called atila. so i named the dog after his dog because his dog died. >> now that you raised to the olympics, most people might not realize that isabel allende is an olympian, but you're going to have to tell us the rest of the story in the we will come back to "ripper." this was 2006 in italy? >> i don't remember the year very well, but we got a phone call saying i have been chosen to carry the olympics.

i have never done any sports my life. i don't know what a treadmill is. i've never been in a gym. i said what ? my son who is an athlete, he could not believe it. he thought it was the most unfair thing in the world. but they chose me to represent south america. susan sarandon was going to represent north america. sophia loren, europe. ok. and i was between them. [laughter] not a good position. so we get there and first of all, eight hours in the green room because of the security. so i got to really know them. sophia loren was eating bananas. and she is slim. how can she be slim if she's only eating carbohydrates? she says that everything you see, she owes to spaghetti. that is not true.

because i tried it and i gained 10 pounds in the wrong places. she is spectacular. at the time, she was 74. she was over 70. she looked spectacular from a distance. from close, you can see more of the makeup, but still. the legs and the breasts and the tan and the mane of hair --could be a wig, but i don't think so. i said, you look so fantastic or somebody asked her and she said posture. posture. i walk straight, sit straight, and i don't make old people noises. [laughter] [groans] none of that. so now she is 80 and she still looks spectacular with note old people noises, so keep that in mind. then we had to carry the flag in freezing -- by then, it was like

midnight and everybody was exhausted. we had to stand in a place. the flag is huge. eight people carried -- all women. four on one side, four on this side. i am right behind sophia loren and in front of susan sarandon. then we get to carry the flag. everybody puts the flag on their shoulder, and i have to carry the flag like this -- [laughter] sophia loren was walking with elegance and susan sarandon is spectacular and sexy behind. and i am trotting. because i walked down sophia loren, i was in all of the pictures -- between her legs, but i was there. in many of the pictures, and i have some in my office, you see the flag, you see sophia loren and susan sarandon, and my legs. the flag covers me completely. i am invisible. that was my 15 minutes of fame

in the olympics. [laughter] >> would you read from your latest book "ripper"? >> the most important thing according to my husband was in a crime novelist, in a mystery, is to have a body in the first page. so you have to start with the body. and then try to create suspense. so i'm going to read for two minutes one of the crimes, but not the first one, because it is short. "rachel sensed something behind her. a shadowy presence like a bad memory. she stood motionless, engulfed by the same fear should felt in the garage. she tried to control her imagination. she did not want to end up like her mother, who spent her last years locked in her apartment

never going out, convinced the gestapo were waiting on the other side of the door. old people get scared, she thought, but i'm not like my mother. she thought she heard a rustling of paper or plastic. she turned toward the kitchen door. she can make out a shadow in the doorway. a faceless figure moving slowly and awkwardly like an astronaut on the moon. a terrible howl came from the pit of her stomach, searching up through her chest like a blazing fire. creaturehe fearsome advance toward her. a second scream stuck in her throat and she ran out of there. rachel stepped backward, bumped into the table, and fell side was, shielding her head with her arms. she lay on the floor, begging in a whisper for him not to hurt her, offering money and anything

else of value in the house. trembling, she crawled under the table and crawled up bargaining and weeping for the three never-ending minutes she was still conscious. she did not even feel the pinprick of the needle in her thigh." >> are you planning to write another mystery novel? >> not right now. i wish i could do that in the future, because i had so much fun. right now i'm running a book that is not going anywhere. >> have you ever started a book that you did not finish? >> no. i've always finished it because i show up every single day. >> what is your daily ritual for writing? >> i start very early in the morning. i write usually all day -- >> do you eat breakfast first? >> i drink two cups of coffee and sometimes toast.

i don't need much when i am writing. that is the truth. i have so much fun writing. i spend all day writing. now i have to get up every 45 minutes and walk a little bit around the garden because my back hurts. and then i take out the dogs twice a day, and that's it. the rest is just writing, researching, reading, dreaming, thinking, living with the characters. it is a compulsion. then when the book is done, i feel relieved that finally, i finished. and then i get depressed for like 25 minutes because the characters are gone and they been living with me for so long. they are my companions. >> are there other aspirations you have besides writing? >> yes, i would like to have had long legs. [laughter] >> chilean american novelist isabel allende at the americas society council of the americas

here in new york earlier this year. on november 24, president obama awarded her the presidential medal of freedom. isabel allende is the author of 20 books, including "the house of the spirits." her latest is a mystery novel based in the bay area titled "ripper." her books have been translated into 35 languages and sold 60 million copies around the world. you can go to democracynow.org to watch all of our interviews with isabel allende. democracy now! is looking for -- and our camera crew -- goodman.

goodman.

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