Novel · A way to begin
The Kingdom of This World
El reino de este mundo
Alejo Carpentier · 1949
Synopsis
Haiti before, during and after its revolution, seen through Ti Noël, a slave who witnesses events without leading them. Mackandal, a one-armed man who has taken refuge in the mountains, learns about herbs and launches a campaign of poisoning; Bouckman, who has come from Jamaica, gathers the slaves at Bois-Caïman to prepare the uprising; later, Henri Christophe, a former cook who has become king, has Sans-Souci and the Citadelle built by forced labour.
Context
The novel grew out of a trip to Haiti in 1943, with Louis Jouvet, to Cap-Haïtien, before the ruins of Sans-Souci and the Citadelle La Ferrière. Its prologue, in which the author coins the expression marvellous real against the manufactured marvellous of the Surrealists, is his most quoted text, but it is missing from the English translation and from many Spanish editions. The book mixes documented facts and invented episodes, such as the metamorphoses of Ti Noël. René L.-F. Durand translated it for Gallimard as early as 1954, Harriet de Onís for Knopf in 1957.
Who it is for
A short, dense novel; a few points of reference on the Haitian Revolution make it easier to read.
Prizes and reception
Well received, it is counted among the important works of Caribbean and Latin American letters.
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