Bestselling author Isabel Allende wins Spain's prestigious Planeta Prize

MADRID- Isabel Allende has won this year's edition of Spain's Planeta Prize on Thursday, October 16, for the sequel to her bestselling fiction debut, four decades after the Chilean novelist introduced readers to the Trueba family's ghosts, secrets and upheavals.

The prestigious award carrying a €1 million ($1.16 million) cash prize went to Allende's "La hora antes del alba" (The Hour Before Dawn). It follows one of the characters from her acclaimed "The House of the Spirits", published in 1982.

"It's like winning the Nobel (Prize)," the 84-year-old writer told reporters after the ceremony on Thursday night in Barcelona led by Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia.

The new novel focuses on Alba, granddaughter of Esteban Trueba and Clara del Valle, as she rebuilds her life after imprisonment and torture under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The prize is among the Spanish-speaking world's most commercially important literary awards, although it also draws regular criticism over a selection process that is piecemeal, theatrical and often seen as favouring established names.

The win also marks a publishing shift for Chile's best-known contemporary author. After over four decades with Plaza & Janes, part of Penguin Random House, Allende has signed for publishing group Planeta, which funds the namesake prize.

Forced to leave Chile after the 1973 military coup against her uncle, President Salvador Allende, she has often returned in her fiction to exile, memory and women who endure violence without surrendering their voice.

With democracies under strain in many places, Allende said in her acceptance speech that the time for her book was right because the "topic is in the air".

"Now that I see so many democracies threatened by authoritarianism, extreme nationalism and even fascism, I feel again the fear that led me to leave my country."

Reporting by Mireia Merino; Editing by David Latona and Andrew Cawthorne/Reuters