Alejo Carpentier

El reino de este mundo es una novela publicada en 1949 por el escritor cubano Alejo Carpentier cuyo tema principal, lo real maravilloso, se enmarca en la Revoluci n haitiana. En esta novela, ampliamente aceptada por la cr tica y que pertenece ya al canon acad mico, el lector se introduce, a trav s de los ojos de un esclavo, en la fascinante atm sfera de una Hait en busca de independencia, un mundo de pasiones que se desenvuelven en medio de la feroz caricatura de los extraordinarios lujos de la corte bonapartista. Novela pionera del realismo m gico, en una Am rica donde lo m gico es cotidiano y real.

Originally published in 1946 and never before available in English, Music in Cuba is not only the best and most extensive study of Cuban musical history, it is a work of literature. Drawing on such primary documents as church circulars and musical scores, Carpentier encompasses European-style elite Cuban music as well as the popular rural Spanish folk and urban Afro-Cuban music.

A swashbuckling tale set in the Caribbean at the time of the French Revolution, Explosion in a Cathedral focuses on Victor Hugues, a historical figure who led the naval assault to take back the island of Guadeloupe from the English at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Carpentier's telling, this piratical character walks into the lives of the wealthy orphans Esteban and Sofia and casts them abruptly into the midst of the immense changes sweeping the world outside their Havana mansion.