One of Latin America's foremost writers, Isabel Allende, 60, was raised in Chile. The country's socialist president, Salvador Allende, who died during General Pinochet's 1973 coup, was her godfather and cousin. She worked as a journalist, playwright and children's writer in Chile until 1974, before going into exile in Venezuela, where she stayed for 13 years. Her first novel for adults, The House of the Spirits (1982), was an international bestseller; it was followed by more novels including Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia and Paula, which was written for her late daughter, who died in 1992 at the age of 29. Allende lives in San Francisco with her second husband.

Isabelle and her husband, Willie in 2003

Your mother is your editor. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this working situation?
Sam Horrocks, Hartlepool

My mother is the first person to read my books. She used to be a very hard critic, but now she is 84 and has mellowed, so she's not as useful as she was. She used to have a terrible red pencil. We'd have the most horrible arguments. She'd get my manuscript, fly from her home in Chile to where I live in California, and we'd lock ourselves in the dining room and yell at each other for a month. I think my novels are better as a result. I hope so - sometimes I had to rewrite the whole thing.

You have lived in many places. Is there one you would call home?Benjamin Morson, Northampton

Home is where my husband is, so, at this point, it's San Francisco.

Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup backed by the CIA. Today, the US is once again pursuing a controversial foreign policy. What do you make of it?
Pamela Falzon, Great Yarmouth

I'm horrified at American foreign policy. Horrified. It's a bully's policy and ignores the rest of the world. But it doesn't make it difficult for me to live in America, because this is a country where you are allowed to be a dissident, so I go around speaking my mind. And, by the way, let me tell you that more than half the population of America does not agree with the government.

You always begin writing your novels on 8 January, the date on which you started The House of the Spirits. Do you have any other superstitions?
Mark Legg, Dover

I'm not a superstitious person. I don't start my novels on that day only for superstition, but also for discipline. My life is very complicated and I need to save a few months each year for total silence and solitude, in order to write. That's my introverted time. I write for at least five or six months after that, and everyone knows I will be locked away, so no one bothers me. Beforehand, I prepare myself by researching the time and place where the novel will be set. When I sit down on 8 January, I don't have a story or characters but I know where and when the story happens.

Your new book, My Invented Country, is about your homeland, Chile. How often do you go back there? Do you see yourself as Chilean?
Kathy Everett, Portsmouth

I go to Chile at least three or four times a year, but I don't normally see myself as Chilean when I'm not there. I see myself as a person from nowhere or everywhere - a sort of international citizen. When I get there, I realise how much I belong. I just blend in. But I don't miss Chile all the time, as I did when I was an exile. Now, I'm an immigrant in the United States and I'm quite happy.

Are the characters in your fiction entirely invented by you? Or do they have real-life models?
Eve Lloyd, London

I have real-life models for most of them. It's easier for me to work if I can visualise somebody. Sometimes it's a person I have known and I just take the personality and biography of that person. Other times, I only need the physical image of a character. For Daughter of Fortune, I did not have a human model for the central character, but I needed to visualise someone. One day, I went to a coffee shop with my husband and the person serving coffee was just like the young girl I had imagined, so I asked her to pose for a photograph. I wrote the whole book with her picture on my desk. And she's on the cover of the book.

How did writing Paula help you to mourn for your daughter?
Liz McAteer, Stirling

It was very cathartic. I was able to sort out the confusion of what had happened and get over the anger. It enabled me to live long enough in my grief to get back on my feet. It was a really important book for me, because after it was published I got such an incredible response from readers. To this day, 10 years later, I still get letters from readers all over the world. I thought I would get a lot of letters from parents who had lost children, but mostly I hear from young women who identify with Paula. Often they are confronting for the first time the idea that they are not immortal.

You have earned your own living since you were 17. Is this evidence of feminism or pragmatism?
Deirdre Thompson, by e-mail

Both: you cannot be a feminist if you cannot support yourself. When I was 17, my first job was as a secretary in the United Nations. I made a conscious decision then to get out of my house and make myself financially independent. When I got married, I wasn't tempted to give up work at all. I had my children and I had three jobs as well.

I read that your maternal grandparents were staunch Anglophiles. Why was this? And did it rub off on you?
Karen Moman, Wells

Only my grandfather was an Anglophile. My grandmother was Castilian and she believed that the language of the future was Esperanto, not English. She was wrong. My grandfather had worked all his life selling wool to British companies, and he admired them very much. He loved the language and anything that came from Britain. He would buy English tweed and tea and all that. My grandmother made fun of him, but I was very Anglophile as a young girl. I thought that I wanted to be very phlegmatic and uptight. Then I realised it wasn't very sexy.

A few years ago, you wrote a book on aphrodisiacs. Which aphrodisiac works best for you?
Harriet Borland, by e-mail

I think the only aphrodisiac that works is having time and space to share alone with the person you want to make love to. I don't think it's really about oysters or chocolate - and I've tried everything.

Do you believe in happy endings?
Peter McGinty, Dublin

I wish I could write happy endings, but usually I can't. I like my characters sometimes, and wish they could have a happy life, but I don't believe that they will. I believe they will have a life of compromises and wheeling and dealing - that's what life is about. My endings are always ambiguous because in life there are no happy endings. The only ending is death.

'My Invented Country: a Nostalgic Journey Through Chile' by Isabel Allende is published by HarperCollins

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=456129