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

4.0

This electric little book deals with the slave uprisings in Haiti at the beginning of the 19th century and the rise and fall of Henri Christophe, the country's first black king. The novel itself is an early and influential example of magical realism in its first form, and writers from Gabriel Garcia Márquez to Isabel Allende express indebtedness to it. Carpentier's writing is a firestorm: rich, bloody, and insistently poetic. This world is brutal and complex, showing us both the oppressive French colonial regime and its aftermath of a society run by the often cruel Henri Christophe. Given the novel's extremely short length, Carpentier gives us an impressive epic on a scale far grander than its brevity would suggest. From the early stirrings of revolution under the leadership of Mackandal to the downfall and looting of Sans-Souci palace, this novel opens up a whole world to explore, and one that was new to me. I was somewhat surprised, given the level of importance afforded this work, that I had never heard of this writer or this novel, originally published in 1949. It left me feeling the gaps in established literary canon acutely.