Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home

by Roberto González Echevarría

Alejo Carpentier was one of the greatest Latin American novelists of the twentieth century, as well as a musicologist, journalist, cultural promoter, and diplomat. His fictional world issues from an encyclopedic knowledge of the history, art, music, and literature of Latin America and Europe. Carpentier’s novels and stories are the enabling discourse of today’s Latin American narrative, and his interpretation of Latin American history has been among the most influential. Carpentier was the first to provide a comprehensive view of Caribbean history that centered on the contribution of Africans, above and beyond the differences created by European cultures and languages. Alejo The Pilgrim at Home , first published in 1977 and updated for this edition, covers the life and works of the great Cuban novelist, offering a new perspective on the relationship between the two. González Echevarría offers detailed readings of the works La música en Cuba , The Kingdom of This World , The Lost Steps , and Explosion in a Cathedral . In a new concluding chapter, he takes up Carpentier’s last years, his relationship with the Cuban revolutionary regime, and his last two novels, El arpa y la sombra and La consagración de la primavera , in which Carpentier reviewed his life and career.

335 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1977

About the author

Roberto González Echevarría is Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale.

Reviews

[Dusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps the single most important book on Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (though it's a bit outdated), The Pilgrim at Home is a kind of literary biography in that it shares Carpentier's life by breaking it into periods that correspond to his literary output. González Echevarría is one of the late twentieth century's most important theorists of Latin American literature, and though he developed a friendship with Carpentier in this book he works his hardest to maintain an objective perspective -- rather, a perspective that allows him to tell the story he, not Carpentier, wants told. It's essential in places, but I get tired quickly with critical texts that break novels into tables and diagrams the way González Echevarría proves, for example, that El reino de este mundo is structured according to the liturgical calendar.