The Kingdom of This World

The Kingdom of This World
by Alejo Carpentier
O Reino Deste Mundo - narrado no estilo realismo mágico, característico de Alejo Carpentier - é a história da
revolução Haitiana e do seu mítico líder Mackandal, morto na fogueira em 1758.
Alguns comentários sobre esta novela e o seu autor:
Mário Vargas Llosa
"uma das mais acabadas que a língua espanhola já produziu.Le Figaro Littéraire
"O melhor romance que apareceu na América Latina dos nossos tempos."O Editor
"Carpentier alcança o ser humano de forma única. A sua obra é insubstituível e incomparável."
No que estes comentários dirão sobre mim, pensarei mais tarde...
|a brilliant and tragic novella about the Haitian liberation from French rule and the government which follows as
seen through the eyes of Ti-Noel, a slave. along with mariano azuela's the underdogs i cannot think of a book that
more effectively illustrates the final words of orwell's animal farm:
"No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man,
and from man to pig, and from pig to man again- but already it was impossible to say which was which."
|Violent slave uprisings, the reign of the first black king of Haiti, the perverse twilight of European decadence, and
the pervasive role of voodoo - all recounted in a lush and sensory prose style that was clearly the inspiration for
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's own sentences. Written in 1949, "The Kingdom of this World" is also the precursor of the
Latin American literary boom in general.
A book about animism, it's narrated from the inside-out, skipping between consciousnesses and spanning years
A book about animism, it's narrated from the inside-out, skipping between consciousnesses and spanning years
without much concern for traditional narrative conventions. A potent novella that offers a heady draught of uncut
magick.|Haiti. A slave revolt. The end of the French rule. The first Negro king. His overthrow. Slaves deposing
masters, becoming new masters with their own slaves, then being thrown out themselves. "This endless return of
chains, this rebirth of shackles, this proliferation of suffering, (this) proof of the uselessness of all revolt."
The language is laconic, desert-like and strange. Of legends and lore, superstitions, magical powers, numbing
brutality, sex, alien names and places.
And a typo, towards the end, right there at the novel's most dramatic passages:
"Now he understood that a man never knows for whom he suffers and hopes. He suffers and hopes and toils for
people he will never know, and who, in turn, will suffer and hope and toil for others who will not be happy either,
for man always seeks a happiness far beyond that which is meted out to him. But man's greatness consists in the
very fact of wanting to be better than he is. In laying duties upon himself. In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no
grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is
infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, all is rest and joy. For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties,
beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness,
his fullest measure, only in the KINGDOF of This World."
KINGDOF it was, believe it or not (FSG Classics, 2006 paperback edition).|My plan for the month is to read
everything he's written. I bought this five hours ago and have read it twice.