world literature series-El Reino de Este Mundo

Aleho Carpentier is a national writer in Cuba who has greatly contributed to Latin American literature's worldwide publicity. Though he was born in Switzerland and has been exposed to European education and art since childhood, including secondary education in Paris, France, Carpentier's foundations have always been his homeland, Cuba and Latin America. In Europe, he also created magazines dealing with Latin American culture and continued to interact with Latin American literary people, and in his works he always dealt with human beings, history, and identity of America. His world of work has had a profound impact on the "boom fiction" generation, which introduced Latin American literature to the world in the 1960s, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes and Julio Cortasar.

Carpentier's representative work, and the work that set up the concept of magical realism, is this "Kingdom of the World." Haiti is Latin America's first land of independence and slavery, representing the Caribbean region that has been ravaged by the great powers since it was discovered and colonized by Columbus in 1492. Carpentier heard the story of King Henri Christophe and of the revolution and the late 18th century slaves in Haiti, and was deeply intrigued by the history of Haiti, which closely resembled its homeland Cuba, which was followed by colonial rule and dictatorship. So-born "The Kingdom of the World" is a novel based on real history but freely unfettered by concrete facts. The story that follows the gaze of a black slave is filled with the realities of Latin America at the time, including the decadent lives of the French who ruled Haiti, the resistance spirit of black slaves, voodoo faith, hope for freedom, historical reflection and enlightenment.

The Kingdom of the World has an article as important as the body of a novel. It's the preface. In this article, Carpentier created the concept of 'the phenomenal reality.' He spoke thus. In Europe, we have to force ourselves to create wonder with poor imagination, so we are obsessed with bizarre things, and such unnaturalness makes everything rather cliche. On the other hand, Latin America has to naturally create a phenomenal work because its reality itself, such as all memory, life, environment and history, is phenomenal. Latin American literature rooted in reality is bound to be different from the notion that it was forced to create in its head, and that is why it is truly a wonder. Beginning with the article, 'The Wonderful Reality' became one of the pillars of Latin American literature, and the preface became the beginning of the magic realism that brought Latin American literature to the world in the 20th century.

a plot
In the late 18th century, the French, who ruled Haiti at that time, harshly oppressed black slaves. The slave Makandal spreads poison to the French family and livestock by the power of sorcery. On the day of Makandal's capture and burn, all the black slaves in Haiti, including T. Noel, a slave who worked on a farm like him, believe that he has come back to life and become a mythical voodoo. Former chef Henri Christophe leads the revolution and takes over power, establishing his own kingdom in Haiti, and T. Noel is drawn to the work of the Holy See. Once again there is a revolt in Henri Christophe's tyranny, this time it becomes a slave to a black-and-white nobleman who holds the power of a new republic. Eventually, T. Noel decides to become a member of the "Animal Kingdom" and puts it into practice, but returns to human condition, realizing the limits of all the past revolutions.

Introduction to Writers-Aleho Carpentier
He was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1904 and spent his childhood in Havana, Cuba. The family moved to Paris in 1912 and returned to Cuba, and entered Havana University in 1921 to study architecture and music theory. He served as a journalist and was imprisoned for actively criticizing the dictatorship. He fled to France in 1928 and interacted with surrealist artists. He returned to Cuba in 1939 and fled back to Venezuela in 1945 and returned when the Cuban Revolution succeeded in 1959. During his incarceration, "Equae-Yamba-O" was published in 1933 and has since published several works based on Latin American culture. He became the first Latin American writer to win the Cervantes Prize in 1978. He died in Paris in 1980 and his remains were laid in Havana's Revolutionary Square. Some of the representative works include "The Kingdom of the World," "The Century of Enlightenment," and "Method petition."