A review by pierreikonnikov
The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier

4.0

A good book, a noble book, but not a great book. The author posits hierarchies are the way of nature, and revolutions are just that: they revolve, the low become high and back again to low, power is defeated by power, and even the geese have social strata. The problem with the book is it is conceit without story, and there is no driving narrative that resolves. As such it is more a series of tableaux, not dissimilar to Candide, but the subtitle here would be the opposite to Voltaire's. The author presents a world in which man is doomed to continue struggling against power forever, and history bears this hypothesis out. Trouble is, he also forgot to include a decent story in there too.