Everybody who has read a book by Isabel Allende – and even if it has just been one until now – knows what this great writer is capable of. She tells a story and takes her reader with her, into every single corner of this fascinating, tense, amazing and never boring fantasy of hers. “My invented country” is the story of her life starting in Chile, a country she introduces to us from different angles. She loves it and makes fun of it at the same time. But she is allowed to do that, since this is her home. The title of the book tells us what Isabel Allende does: she not only remembers what she experienced when she was a child and a young woman, she also invents, so the reader can never be sure if what she writes is a memory of what really happened or if it is just an invention. But this does not matter since everything Allende writes is meant to create an image of her “invented” country, of the place she was born and how this country has been changing over the years. She makes fun of the people living there and includes herself. This is so special about Isabel Allende: she always makes fun of herself as well as of the others so you cannot blame her for doing it. In this book we get to know Allende’s grandparents and even her great-grandparents, her aunts, uncles and friends. She takes the position of a feminist even before this term was created to describe what we today see in a feminist writer. Maybe we cannot take every word seriously but we definitely get a wonderful picture of Chile drawn by a great writer.