Allende creates this scenario
brilliantly, drawing on her experience of magic realism and the world of the
imagination which is a refuge for anyone whether in childhood or later. (Review
by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
Isabel Allende’s latest novel The Wind Knows My Name (translated by Frances Riddle) opens in Vienna in 1938, on the eve of Kristallnacht.
The Adler family have a comfortable life with work and friends, but all that is about to change. Samuel Adler is five, musical and loved, but in a desperate effort to save his life, his mother puts him on a Kindertransport to Britain with just his precious violin. His early years in Britain are horrible, and only after the war will he find a proper home with a Quaker family. But Samuel has been damaged by his early experiences – he finds it very difficult to relate to people or make meaningful relationships.
Samuel is the first of three refugee children in the novel. The second is Leticia from El Salvador, a refugee in America in the 1980s. She is the least-developed character as a child but will come into her own later in the book. The third is Anita, a contemporary victim of Donald Trump’s inhumane and revolting policy of separating children from their parents when they cross the southern border illegally. Already damaged, physically and mentally, Anita is subjected to a succession of horrors until social worker Selena and lawyer Frank take on her case, struggling in vain to find out what has happened to her mother, and to get her accepted into the USA.
Anita takes refuge in the imaginary world of Azabahar, with an imaginary companion. Allende creates this scenario brilliantly, drawing on her experience of magic realism and the world of the imagination which is a refuge for anyone whether in childhood or later. And as Covid lockdowns begin to bite, the fates of the now-elderly Samuel, the middle-aged Leticia and the child Anita become intertwined in ways that the reader has not foreseen.
The final section of the novel is very moving, and offers a hope that even damaged lives can find some kind of restoration. However, what has gone before is not without flaws. The Wind Knows My Name is not a long novel, and often the plotting seems rushed, which does not allow for a great deal of character development. Leticia is lightly sketched, which makes her warmth, humour and her pivotal role towards the climax seem slightly odd. And important events in the lives of the characters are just brushed over.
But Allende’s anger at the treatment of child refugees is palpable, and it is this that gives her novel its heft. And, as always, whatever she writes is worth any reader’s time. - Margaret von Klemperer
The Wind Knows My Name is published by Bloomsbury: ISBN 978-1-5266-6034-3
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