Alejo Carpentier

A swashbuckling tale set in the Caribbean at the time of the French Revolution, Explosion in a Cathedral (El siglo de las luces) 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.

“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

“If Carpentier is ever to get a new reading in English, it should be now. . . . West’s translations . . . reintroduce English-language readers to this giant of Latin American fiction. . . . What the reader takes away overall from West’s translation is a freshness and bite and aesthetic ambition that match Carpentier’s.” Natasha Wimmer, The New York Review of Books

“A foundational text of the Latin American “Boom” has at last been translated directly into English. . . . Adrian Nathan West’s translation is agreeably fast-paced. . . . He is more faithful to Carpentier’s ornate style and . . . generally reproduces the gravitas of the Spanish original. . . . [There is] hope that our contemporary re-examination of slavery, colonialism and European liberalism will give Explosion in a Cathedral new relevance in the English-speaking world. Readers . . . should be grateful for this belated new version.” The Times Literary Supplement

 “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