7 books by Alejo Carpentier
Requirements: ePUB reader, 0.4 – 1.5 mb.
Overview: Perhaps Cuba’s most important intellectual figure of the twentieth century, Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980) was a novelist, a classically trained pianist and musicologist, a producer of avant-garde radio programming, and an influential theorist of politics and literature. Best known for his novels, Carpentier also collaborated with such luminaries as Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Georges Bataille, and Antonin Artaud. Though born in France, to a French father and a Russian mother, Carpentier claimed throughout his life that he was Cuban-born. Taken to Havana as an infant Carpentier also lived for many years in France and Venezuela but returned to Cuba after the 1959 revolution. Among the first practitioners of the style known as “magic realism,” he exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez.
Genre: Literature, General Fiction
The Kingdom of This World: The Kingdom of This World was published in 1949 in his Carpentier’s native Spanish and first translated into English in 1957. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Haiti before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution as seen by its central character, Ti Noel, who serves as the novel’s connecting thread. Carpentier’s work has been influenced by his multi-cultural experience and his passion for the arts, as well as by authors such as Miguel de Cervantes.
Throughout the novel, varying perceptions of reality that arise due to cultural differences between its characters are emphasized and contrasted. Carpentier explores hybridization, nature, voodoo, ethnicity, history and destiny, confusion, violence, and sexuality in a style that blends history with fiction and uses repetition to emphasize the cyclical nature of events. The Kingdom of This World has been described as an important work in the development of magic realism in Caribbean and Latin American literature.
The Lost Steps: Translated into twenty languages and published in more than fourteen Spanish editions, The Lost Steps, originally published in 1953, is Alejo Carpentier’s most heralded novel.
A composer, fleeing an empty existence in New York City, takes a journey with his mistress to one of the few remaining areas of the world not yet touched by civilization-the upper reaches of a great South American river. The Lost Steps describes his search, his adventures, and the remarkable decision he makes in a village that seems to be truly outside history.
The Chase: In a nameless, Havana-like city, an anonymous man flees a team of shadowy, relentless political assassins, and ultimately takes refuge in a symphony auditorium during a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica. . . . This nightmarish novel does not so much tell a story as map the secret political infrastructure of cities, governments, churches, music, and bodies.
The Harp and the Shadow: Exploring the consequences of the European discovery of the Americas and challenging the myth of Columbus, Alejo Carpentier-"the father of magical realism"-studies the first meetings of the Western and American cultures and the tragic consequences of tarnished and abandoned idealism.
Explosion in a Cathedral: Originally published in 1962 and regarded as one of Latin America’s greatest historical novels, Explosion in a Cathedral deals with the impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean.The book follows the story of three privileged Creole orphans from Havana, as they meet French adventurer Victor Hugues and get involved in the revolutionary turmoil that shook the Atlantic World at the end of the eighteenth century. The narrative deals with the cyclical nature of control, destruction, and development during revolution. Stylistically, it contains elements of existentialism and magical realism, and it mirrors the tension between Europe and Latin America found in many of Carpentier’s other works.
War of Time: A collection of five stories originally published in 1958. In "The Highroad of Saint James," a man goes on a pilgrimage from Antwerp through Europe to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In "Right of Sanctuary," a modern political refugee finds an inexplicable new life in the embassy of a foreign nation. "Journey Back to the Source" relates the strange and meaningful occurrences accompanying the demolition of an old house. "Like the Night" is the story of a Greek girl trying to satisfy her future husband’s craving for profane love and meeting a curious rebuff. In "The Chosen," more than one Noah sets out upon the waters to preserve the future.
Concierto Barroco: Here in English for the first time is Concierto Barraco, the novella Carpentier called "a verbal fiesta." A wealthy, eighteenth-century Mexican and his Cuban servant travel to Spain and Venice, where the musical geniuses of three centuries come together. The story of Montezuma becomes an opera as the New World impacts the Old, providing through its mythic material an unexpected leap into a transformed reality.
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