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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I'm very happy today to once again be facing Isabella Yende. Her new novel, Island

Beneath the Sea, has been published by Harper.

It's the story of a mulata woman who was a slave and concubine determined to control her destiny in a society where that would seem impossible.

Isabella Allende is an internationally esteemed writer,

still perhaps most famous for her first novel, The House of the Spirits.

It is a pleasure to see you again, Isabel.

It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Michael.

It's a great delight.

This novel takes place in Haiti and begins when?

It begins at the end of the 1700s,

when the slave revolt started in what is now Haiti

and was then a French colony called Sandamang.

And it's the story of a young slave.

She's nine years old, Zardt, when she's sold to a planter. And so the

first part of the book happens in that colony. Then the slave revolt happens in the middle of the

book. And the whites had to escape. And so she follows her master to New Orleans. So the second

...