Of Love and Shadows, or De Amor y de Sombra, was first published
in Spanish in 1984. It is Isabel Allende’s second novel, after the highly
successful The House of the Spirits. Of Love and Shadows traces the
developing love between the principal characters, Irene Beltrán and
Francisco Leal, amidst the backdrop of a military dictatorship in an
unnamed Latin American country resembling Chile. If we presume that
the novel is set in Chile, and the military dictator known as ‘the General’
is based on General Augusto Pinochet, then the novel is set in 1978, ‘five
years’ after the coup (p.137).
