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The unevenly clustered historical conditions of the Caribbean nations bind us to the revival and redefinition of the ideals of unification begotten by 19th Century Puerto Rican thinkers. Coleccion Caribena is intended to build connection points that will

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Library Journal Review

Originally published in 1974, this novella was the first work Carpentier wrote after an 11-year respite, and it reflects his second career in musicology. Loaded with the kind of local color that requires many Spanish and Italian words to remain untranslated, the story is phantasmagorical in its representation of time: it begins with the master using a silver chamber pot in colonial Mexico and ends with his black servant tendering his ticket to a Louis Armstrong concert. The theme is reverse transculturation between the Old World and New; thus in his travels the protagonist finds Europe drab in comparison to the opulence of Mexico. For collections strong in Latin American fiction. Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

An 18th century nameless Mexican nobleman and his Cuban servant, Filomeno, journey from the New World to the Old. In Venice, dazzled by and invigorated with the enchantment of the Christmas carnival, the pair encounters a trio of revelers who turn out to be the baroque composers Vivaldi, Handel and Scarlatti. The celebratory mood continues as the Mexican's tales of his homeland prompt Vivaldi to write and stage an opera based on Cortez's conquest of Montezuma. After the ridiculous performance, the confused master retreats to the security of Mexico, which seems to him more grounded in reality than the fantastical Venice, while Filomeno, bewitched by the city and especially by the music, remains. The late Cuban writer and musicologist Carpentier was a pioneer experimenter with the style of magic realism, which suffuses this story, from the overflowing, baroque sentences and the characters' languid, mysterious conversations to the purposeful blending of historical time periods. Also apparent throughout is a strong sense of irony. By creating a New World master who seeks adventure in the Old World, and a servant who is the book's most intelligent and articulate character, Carpentier reverses the expected order. This novella is a bizarre and compelling fantasy, a labyrinth-like journey laced with layers of allusions, insights and humor. (September) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Born in Cuba of French parents, Carpentier was a novelist, musicologist, poet, and essayist. One of his goals was to make a contribution to cross-fertilization between the New and Old Worlds. In his view, the cultural attainments of America were influencing European culture and were saving it from complete impoverishment. Carpentier's major innovation was the concept of "magic realism," a literary school that merges mythical and fantastic elements with real events. In this, Carpentier's last novella, he describes the experiences of a wealthy 18th-century Mexican who travels to Spain and Venice, where he meets composers Vivaldi, Scarlatti, and Handel at a Christmeas carnival in 1709. If there is anything resembling plot or development of character, it was submerged in the author's musical interests and kaleidoscopic exposition of cerebral and erudite language suggesting a display of art for art's sake. Music itself becomes the major character; the central theme becomes an exhibition of the treasures that music harbors for the human spirit. The author reveals here his actual discovery of Aluise Giusti's lost libretto of Vivaldi's first opera Montezuma, the first treatment of an American theme in opera by an important composer. Recommended for college, university, and public libraries. -I. Molina, Miami University (OH)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Alejo Carpentier was director of Cuba's National Press, which published many millions of volumes in an ambitious program, and for some years was Cuba's ambassador to France. A composer and musicologist, he consciously applied the principles of musical composition in much of his work. Imprisoned for political activity in 1928, he escaped with the aid of Robert Desnos, a French surrealist poet, to Paris, where he joined the literary circle of surrealists Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, and Paul Eluard.

According to Carpentier surrealism influenced his style and helped him to see "aspects of American life he had not previously seen, in their telluric, epic, and poetic contexts." Carpentier articulated a theory of marvelous reality, "lo real maravilloso," with an almost surrealistic sense of the relationship among unrelated, or antithetical, elements, often from distinct ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The Lost Steps (1953) takes the form of a diary of a Cuban musician and intellectual who seeks escape from civilization during his trip to a remote Amazon village in search of native musical instruments.

The short stories "The Road to Santiago," "Journey to the Seed," and "Similar to Night," present time as subjective rather than historical, and capable of remarkable personal variations. In his novel The Pursuit, printed in The War of Time (1958), whose title is an allusion to a line from Lope de Vega defining a man as "a soldier in the war of time, presents time similarly. "The Kingdom of This World (1949) deals with the period of Henri Christophe and the slave revolts in Haiti. Its circular structure presents the inevitable recurrence of tyranny and the need for eternal struggle against it. Reasons of State (1976), is another notable addition to the gallery of Latin American fictional portraits of dictators. It uses Carpentier's love for baroque style and parody to raise complex questions about the nature of revolution.

(Bowker Author Biography)