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One of Cuba’s—and Latin America’s—greatest historical novels, about imperial conquest carried out under the guise of liberation, in its first new English translation in sixty years and featuring a new foreword by Alejandro Zambra
A Penguin Classic
When he arrives in Cuba at the close of the eighteenth century, Victor Hugues, a merchant sailor from Marseille, brings with him not only the idealism of the French Revolution but also its ambition and bloodlust. Landing at the Havana doorstep of a trio of wealthy, eccentric Creole orphans, he sweeps them across the Caribbean Sea to Guadeloupe, whose enslaved Africans he frees only then to exploit them in his fight against the British for colonial sovereignty. What ensues in Alejo Carpentier’s swashbuckling, magical realist masterpiece is an explosive clash between the New World and the Old World, and between revolutionary ideals and the corrupting allure of power.
For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 12, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780525505679
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780525505679
- File size: 1246 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from November 1, 2023
Supplanting an earlier English-language edition adapted secondhand from the French, West's translation from the original Spanish of El Siglo de las Luces (1962), restores the vivid imagery of Carpentier's story chronicling the promise and betrayal of Enlightenment ideals as played out in the colonies of the New World. Following the fluctuating fortunes of true believer Victor Hugues, the "Robespierre of the Colonies," who proclaims the emancipation of the enslaved inhabitants of Guadalupe while dealing death to counterrevolutionaries via that infernal machine, the guillotine. In the end, the Rights of Man prove no match for the profitable exigencies of three centuries of colonial subjugation, while Hugues's opportunistic privateering rouses tensions between the fledgling republics of France and the United States. VERDICT Juxtaposing engrossing accounts of political and actual tempests raging across the Caribbean with elaborate descriptions of luxuriant decay and the idle trappings of the ancien r�gime, this lush, erudite period piece by Carpentier (1904-80) brings to visceral life the intellectual ferment and inevitable disillusionment of the Age of Reason, with pungent force. A landmark of Latin American literature.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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