Writer, born in Havana, Cuba. For many years he lived in France and Venezuela, but returned to Cuba after the revolution and served in several official government posts. A musicologist, he was professor of music history at the National Conservatory. One of the major Latin-American writers of the 20th-c, his numerous books include El siglo de las luces (1962, trans Explosion in the Cathedral), El reino de este mundo (1949, The Kingdom of this World), and Los pasos perdidos (1953, The Lost Steps).
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period.
Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately after his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. When they returned to Cuba, he began a study of architecture which he never completed.
He returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist.
Widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of "lo real maravilloso," his most famous works include Ecue-yamba-o! ("Praised Be the Lord!", 1933), The Kingdom of this World (1949) and The Lost Steps (1953). It was in the prologue to The Kingdom, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of "lo real maravilloso" or the marvelous real, which some critics interpret as being synonymous with magical realism.
From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set.
He returned to Cuba after the revolution in 1959 and served as Cuban ambassador to France.
Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980.
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