Hulu Set to Adapt Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits

Hulu is in the developmental stages of adapting Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits into a series, per Deadline.

The novel was Allende’s authorial debut, and was first published in Spanish in 1982 before being translated to English (as well as 34 other languages) in 1985. It quickly became a bestseller, though the novel has been both lauded and criticized for its parallels to Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967. Both novels are highly regarded examples of magical realism. Some consider The House of the Spirits to be a feminist ripoff of Marquez’s classic novel, while others see the work as a masterclass piece of literature written in a style that is uniquely Latin American (which Marquez coincidentally helped to develop).

At 500 pages, The House of the Spirits tells the sprawling story of four generations of family, though the primary focus is on two women, Clara del Valle and Alba de Satigny. The novel is loosely based on events from Allende’s own life—Allende’s father was cousins with socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende, who would be overthrown in a military coup by Augusto Pinochet that bears striking similarities to an uprising in the unnamed country in the novel.