The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier, Harriet de Onis (Translator), Edwidge Danticat (Introduction)

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Synopsis

A few years after its liberation from the brutality of French colonial rule in 1803, Haiti endured a period of even greater brutality under the reign of King Henri-Christophe, who was born a slave in Grenada but rose to become the first black king in the Western Hemisphere. In prose of often dreamlike coloration and intensity, Alejo Carpentier records the destruction of the black regime—built on the same corruption and contempt for human life that brought down the French while embodying the same hollow grandeur of false elegance, attained only through slave labor—in an orgy of voodoo, race hatred, madness, and erotomania.

Annotation

Set in Haiti, this is a fictional account of the destruction of the black regime under King Henri-Christophe, who reigned over an orgy of voodoo.

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.