COMP CLOSED: WIN ‘Violeta’ by Isabel Allende

One extraordinary woman. One hundred years of history. One unforgettable story.

This week’s giveaway book is Violeta from world-acclaimed author Isabel Allende – niece and goddaughter of Salvador Allende, a former president of Chile. Her first novel, The House of the Spirits (1985), became a worldwide bestseller and critical success. After more than 20 novels to her name, this is her latest and we have three copies to be won. Here’s a quick synopsis:

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first daughter in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling.

In a letter to someone she loves above all others, Violeta recounts devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy, and a life shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humour will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.

If you’d like to win a copy, this week we’d like you to tell us which YEAR in the past century YOU think was the most influential and WHY (in 25 words or fewer). Our three favourite answers will win a copy of this book!

Entries close midday Monday 21 February 2022, Sydney/Melbourne time.

THIS COMPETITION HAS NOW CLOSED. THANKS FOR YOUR ENTRIES! WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED BY EMAIL AND ANNOUNCED IN OUR NEWSLETTER.