Alejo Carpentier

Trasunto natural del mestizaje entre Francia y el Caribe que se daba en el propio Alejo Carpentier, El siglo de las luces es sin lugar a dudas una de las cimas de su obra. Urdida en torno a la figura histórica del ambicioso Víctor Hugues ­comerciante y aventurero marsellés, partidario de Robespierre, exportador de la Revolución francesa y de sus principios a las Antillas­ y los personajes del idealista Esteban y la resuelta Sofía, la novela, construida con un formidable dominio del lenguaje y del arte de contar, constituye un caudaloso y fascinante recorrido por la serie de singulares acontecimientos que la Revolución desencadenó en las colonias y que azotaron como un huracán, dejando tras de sí vidas y vanidades, las islas antillanas.

“A tour de force . . . built around the exciting and timely theme of revolutionary-turned-tyrant.” The New York Times Book Review

 “In rich prose adorned with magical flourishes, Explosion in a Cathedral . . . touch[es] on still-reverberating themes of discrimination and racism, corruption and power, and the pursuit of self-determination versus the influence of former colonial powers.” Americas Quarterly

“The beauty of Carpentier’s prose can never be emphasized enough, and here it rises to incredible levels. . . . Explosion in a Cathedral is a novel that . . . has never finished saying what it has to say. . . . Read today, some sixty years since its original publication, at the end of a pandemic, amid wars and totalitarian governments and a radical climate crisis . . . [it] continues to accompany us, to question us, to challenge and move us, and ultimately to help us in the arduous and terrible exercise of reading the world.” Alejandro Zambra, from the Foreword of Explosion in a Cathedral

“Remarkable for its intelligence conjoined with the tragic sense of life, a bleak masterpiece that rightfully stands alongside the works of Joseph Conrad and V. S. Naipaul.”  The Bulwark