Isabel Allende: Zorro

[bibliogramma]

Isabel Allende's Zorro is a fun read - an attempt to flesh out an origin story for the iconic swashbuckling hero, taking bits and pieces from a variety of versions to create something that's both enjoyable reading and internally consistent. And it explains just how Diego de la Vega learned all those neat skills, and how he came to be a defender of the poor and disenfranchised while the others of his class were not.

It's not, on the surface, what one might expect from a writer with the reputation of someone like Allende. But it's easy to see she had fun with it. In a review of the book for The Guardian, Ian Sansom writes:

The story goes that Isabel Allende was sitting at home one day when a bunch of people arrived on her doorstep, saying they owned the copyright to the character of Zorro and would she like to write a new novel about the masked avenger? Allende initially turned down the offer, considering such work beneath her, but then she started thinking about all that juicy historical detail - Spanish America in the late 18th century, the American war of independence, the power struggle between Old Europe and the New World, corrupt governors, the fight for justice on behalf of the oppressed - and she also started to imagine Antonio Banderas playing the role of Zorro in the film of the book, and thus was born Zorro: The Novel. All fired up and full of vigour and vim, she wrote the book, apparently, in three months. (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jun/04/isabelallende.fiction)

Allende's Zorro - whose real name is Diego de la Vega - is the son of an aristocratic Spanish landowner and a native American Shoshone warrior; raised in part among his mother's people, he is already on his way to becoming a formidable warrior when he is sent by his father to study swordfighting in Spain. On his journey, he is accompanied by his childhood friend (and servant/sidekick) Bernardo, another child of mixed heritage, who was struck mute in childhood after witnessing the rape and murder of his mother. In Spain, Diego and Bernardo have many adventures, and Diego begins in earnest the long path towards becoming Zorro, the sword of justice, the defender of the weak.

I enjoyed the depth and background Allende gave to the story of the man in the mask.