Chile

By Night in Chile, by Roberto Bolaño (2000). The deathbed confessions of a Jesuit priest in Santiago justifies how he got caught up in behind-the-scenes Chilean politics, from the assassination of Allende to the dictatorship of Pinochet. This acclaimed novel by the Chilean Bolaño—hailed by El Pais as one of Latin America's "brightest literary stars" (and who died in exile in Barcelona in 2003)—comments lyrically and with satiric wit on the relationship between church and state in Chile and the personal price one man pays for his ambitions.

My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile, by Isabel Allende (2003). In this memoir of growing up in Chile, bestselling author Allende explores how a country shaped her own writing. Allende fled Santiago with her family after the assassination of her uncle, Chile's president Salvador Allende, in 1973. She now lives in California and writes here with self-acknowledged nostalgia about the Chilean personality, class system, and landscape ("a geological miracle between the heights of the cordillera and the depths of the sea").

Chile: A Traveler's Literary Companion, ed. by Katherine Silver (2003) This lively anthology contains 22 short stories, grouped geographically, from some of Chile's best writers, including Pablo Neruda (on Valparaiso) and Ariel Dorfman (on Santiago), but also lesser known names like Jose Donoso and Marta Brunet. What emerges is an appreciation of this South American country's great diversity, from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego.

The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende (1985). The epic story of the Trueba family begins at the turn of the last century. Although this magical-realist novel is set in an unspecified country in South America, the political events are similar to those of the author's native Chile. This bestseller, Allende's first book, offers a mix of reality and fantasy.