Beginning with the clairvoyant Clara del Valle and then deliving into four generations of the Trueba family, Allende's masterpiece is a triumph of literary exploration between the domestic and the political.

First published in Spanish as La casa de los espíritus in 1982, Allende's debut novel follows the entanglement of family histories within a place loosely based, but certainly recognisable, as Cuba. It is often associated with Latin American magical realism, yet it does not distract from Allende's approach to exploring the relationship between memory and testimony. Ghosts, premonitions and unexplained occurrences coexist with ordinary family life, while the novel's shifting narrators reveal how differently history is understood by those who exercise power and those who endure it.

At its centre are the women who preserve, record and reinterpret what has happened, even as successive generations inherit the consequences of events they did not choose. A novel concerned as much with the making of history as with its telling, and with the possibility that remembering might itself constitute a form of resistance. Translated from the Spanish by Magda Bogin.

Black Swan, London, 1996. Reprint of the 1986 paperback edition. Softcover. Good vintage condition, with light edge wear and age-toning to pages.