The Kingdom of This World; A Novel

by Alejo Carpentier; Translated by Harriet De Onís

• ISBN13: 9780374521974
• ISBN10: 0374521972
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1989-09-01
• Publisher: FARRAR STRAUS & GIROUX

Summary

A few years after its liberation from French colonialist rule, Haiti experienced a period of unsurpassed brutality, horror, and superstition under the reign of the black King Henri-Christophe. Through the eyes of the ancient slave Ti-Noel,The Kingdom of This Worldrecords the destruction of the black regime--built on the same corruption and contempt for human life that brought down the French--in an orgy of voodoo, race hatred, erotomania, and fantastic grandeurs of false elegance.

Author Biography

Alejo Carpentier was born in Havana in 1904. He lived for many years in France and Venezuela but returned to Cuba after the revolution. One of the major Latin American writers of this century, he is the author of The Lost Steps, Explosion in a Cathedral, and The Chase. He died in Paris in 1980.

Table of Contents

"Carpentier's writing has the power and range of a cathedral organ on the eve of the Resurrection."--The New Yorker

"Carpetier's energy is gigantic and pell-mell, sweeping colossi on top of each other with ruthless, contemptuous daring."--The Yale Review

"Carpentier creates a brilliant, improbable world which has the stylized reality of the great myths."--The Atlantic Monthly

"The Kingdom of This World packs literary dynamite. There can be no disputing the fact, Carpentier is equipped with an elegant perception and a distinctive style which make him a writer to be classed with Thomas Mann and W.H. Hudson."--San Francisco Chronicle