Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Penguin Modern Classics (1975), Edition: n.e., Paperback, 120 pages
Description
"After its liberation from harsh French rule in 1803, Haiti endured a period of great brutality under Henri Christophe, who was born a slave but rose to become the first black king in the Western Hemisphere. In this unnerving novel, Henri Christophe's oppressive rule is observed through the eyes of the elderly slave Ti No�l. Ranging across the country, searching for true liberation, Ti No�l finds himself confronted with bloody revolutions, maniacal rulers, and the mysterious power of voodoo magic. The Kingdom of this World is widely recognized as a masterpiece of Cuban and Caribbean literature. Pablo Medina's remarkable new translation renders the dreamlike prose of Alejo Carpentier with nuance and felicity while delivering anew a powerful, visionary, and singularly twisted novel about the birth of modern Haiti: a tale of race, erotomania, mysticism, and madness."--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
This is a modern classic by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier about the revolution in Haiti. First published in 1949, this is not a book that would be written today; it's overwhelmingly male-oriented, with women existing mainly as objects of lust, prostitutes or to rape. And there's some interesting
The novel is told primarily through the eyes of an enslaved Black man named Ti Noel, who witnesses the first attempts to break free, lives through the successful revolt, accompanies the man who enslaved him to Cuba and finally returns to Haiti, where he lives through the oppressive reign of Henri Christophe and long after, always just trying to live free in that corner of Haiti he considers home. This is a slender novel that packs a lot in, provides a lot of information while being full of action, magic realism and life.
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phrasing around issues of race. But setting that aside, this is an interesting look a the first successful slave rebellion in the western world. The novel is told primarily through the eyes of an enslaved Black man named Ti Noel, who witnesses the first attempts to break free, lives through the successful revolt, accompanies the man who enslaved him to Cuba and finally returns to Haiti, where he lives through the oppressive reign of Henri Christophe and long after, always just trying to live free in that corner of Haiti he considers home. This is a slender novel that packs a lot in, provides a lot of information while being full of action, magic realism and life.
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LibraryThing member lriley
The Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier is a writer that I've always kind of liked but not liked a lot. I don't know if 'The Kingdom of this World' is one of the books he built his reputation from but to me it's the best of the five books of his that I've read. It's set in Haiti (beginning in the late
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18th century) and follows the slave Ti Noel from early manhood until his death in old age. One sees through his eyes the rebellion against the French and then the various homegrown dictatorial regimes that will replace them in the next several decades more often than not reinstituting the same kinds of policies that the French regime in Haiti were hated for. Through it all though Ti Noel never loses his humanity nor his spirit to resist. It is a very good book. And on the same subject matter are a trilogy of books by the American novelist Madison Smartt Bell--All souls' rising--The Master of the Crossroads--The stone that the builder refused which are Tolstoyan in scope and extremely well written historical fiction. Show Less
LibraryThing member GlebtheDancer
The book follows a black slave (Ti Noel) during the build up to the slave revolt and the short lived black dominated republic it lead to. Ti Noel is owned by a French landowner, whose brutality direct results in the beginning of the revolution, which was started by another of his slaves (Macandal).
The Kingdom of this World, is a socialist novel, but its message was delivered with a lightness of touch. It is not a realist novel, with vodou presented as a real power in the black community. Characters can transform into animals, undergo incredible trials of pain, and even rise from the dead. It is definitely a Haitians-eye view (or at least, one that practised vodou anyway).
Haiti is presented as a blighted land, with Africa featuring as the promised land. The contrast between the remote God and flaccid leaders of the Europeans, and the active gods and warrior kings of Africa is emphasised. It is presented as part of the motivation for the peasant revolt - the fact that Africans are portrayed as being less afraid to wield power than their European owners.
Ultimately the book's message is a socialist one. Classes spring into being, and inequalities result, from whoever is ruling Haiti, and whatever race they belong to. At the end of the book the mulattoes are poised to rule, but Ti Noel doesn't have any more faith in their ability to free Haitians from poverty than he did the whites (and, eventually, the blacks).
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His owner's decadent lifestyle makes him a prime target and he flees to Cuba with Ti Noel. While they are in Cuba, the black republic is formed. Ti Noel returns to find the new black rulers as decadent as the whites before them, and Haiti in an eternal state of revolt.The Kingdom of this World, is a socialist novel, but its message was delivered with a lightness of touch. It is not a realist novel, with vodou presented as a real power in the black community. Characters can transform into animals, undergo incredible trials of pain, and even rise from the dead. It is definitely a Haitians-eye view (or at least, one that practised vodou anyway).
Haiti is presented as a blighted land, with Africa featuring as the promised land. The contrast between the remote God and flaccid leaders of the Europeans, and the active gods and warrior kings of Africa is emphasised. It is presented as part of the motivation for the peasant revolt - the fact that Africans are portrayed as being less afraid to wield power than their European owners.
Ultimately the book's message is a socialist one. Classes spring into being, and inequalities result, from whoever is ruling Haiti, and whatever race they belong to. At the end of the book the mulattoes are poised to rule, but Ti Noel doesn't have any more faith in their ability to free Haitians from poverty than he did the whites (and, eventually, the blacks).
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LibraryThing member deebee1
Through the eyes of a slave, Ti Noel, we see the traumatic and brutal evolution of Haiti's history after liberation from the colonial French rule, when the black regime of King Henri Christophe, at first so promising, sinks into the same morass of social injustice as the former rulers.
For many
When Ti Noel returns years later to Haiti as a free man, the island is now ruled by King Henri Christophe, a black kingdom. The freedom from previous enslavement, however, so dearly purchased, has merely opened the way for the reestablishment of slavery under the mulatto controlling class. The unthinkable has happened: the enslavement of people of African descent by people of African descent.
A short yet sweeping novel based on historical events, Carpentier writes with power and brilliant imagery. I enjoyed this book immensely, and it goes to my list of top reads for the year.
For many
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years, the blacks suffered from white oppression. Social order was based on the exploitation of the natives for the comfort of the white masters. Through folk wisdom, voodoo,and ancestral worship, a charismatic leader, Macandal whips his followers into an uprising, drums beating across the island as machete-bearing slaves overran the sleeping plantations, slaughtering all in their path, masters, livestock, women and children. The uprising is put down, Macandal is eventually captured and burned before the eyes of the slaves. When Ti Noel returns years later to Haiti as a free man, the island is now ruled by King Henri Christophe, a black kingdom. The freedom from previous enslavement, however, so dearly purchased, has merely opened the way for the reestablishment of slavery under the mulatto controlling class. The unthinkable has happened: the enslavement of people of African descent by people of African descent.
A short yet sweeping novel based on historical events, Carpentier writes with power and brilliant imagery. I enjoyed this book immensely, and it goes to my list of top reads for the year.
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LibraryThing member K_Fox
Amazing how he managed to squeeze such a story into so short a book. Beautiful, yet brutal & tragic also.
LibraryThing member Kirmuriel
It was a short read.
LibraryThing member thorold
Alejo Carpentier was a political radical who had to spend quite a bit of his life in exile outside Cuba, but his project in writing about Haiti was more aesthetic than directly political. He was keen to contribute to the development of a specifically Latin American literature, reflecting his view
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that the American view of the world differed from traditional European views because of the role of collective belief (both indigenous and arising from African-derived ideas like Santeria and Voudou), which could create a kind of objective reality for fantastic events (lo real maravilloso). For him the key thing about the Haitian revolution thus seems to be the interaction between political and mythical elements in shaping the awareness of the people. He was clearly also influenced very heavily by his recollections of some of the sites he visited on his famous trip to Haiti in 1943, especially Henri-Christophe's palace and fort. Instead of a linear account of the events, we get a fragmented, impressionistic view, where we see a few key incidents from the points of view of relatively unimportant characters, giving Carpentier the possibility to abstract and generalise in a way that wouldn't be possible in a classic non-fiction account or a traditional historical novel. The result is very interesting and colourful, and it seems to achieve what Carpentier intended, but of course it lacks one of the important things you normally look for in a historical novel, the opportunity to identify with the characters. Show Less
LibraryThing member technodiabla
Historical fiction meets magical realism in this short novel about the 1803 Slave uprising in Haiti and the rulers that followed. Sad story but since it's told from the point of view of a slave of that time period it's sprinkled with magical voodoo and naive hope. The writing style reminded me of
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reading Greek and Roman mythology. Show Less
LibraryThing member et.carole
This was an important book. The structure of it was beautiful, gracefully capturing dozens of years in a relatively short novel. The content was far from graceful: it was raw without gore; it resonated as true without being clogged with facts. It was deeply uncomfortable, at times, but that felt
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good and necessary, and I was willing to go almost anywhere with Carpentier. The prose was deft and concise. Though the cover heralds it as magical realism, that element plays a minor role in the plot. Carpentier's sparse and factual tone, however, lends strength and continuity to this technique. Hope to reread at some point, though; the pacing and perhaps the circumstances of reading this book led me to take it faster than I would have liked. Show Less
LibraryThing member quondame
An almost mellow, distanced telling of the life and times of Ti Noël in the late 18th early 19th century Haiti, during slavery, revolts, exile and always oppression. A few others individuals are briefly in focus, but while sad the book is remarkably unbitter on the failures of revolution.
Subjects
Language
Original language
Spanish
Original publication date
1949
Physical description
120 p.
ISBN
0140038736 / 9780140038736