Explosion in a Cathedral

<b>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<br><br>A Penguin Classic</b><br><br>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.<br><br>For more than seventy-five years Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2000 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. “A tour de force . . . built around the exciting and timely theme of revolutionary-turned-tyrant.” —<b><i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br><br>“The beauty of Carpentier’s prose can never be emphasized enough and here it rises to incredible levels. . . . <i>Explosion in a Cathedral</i> is a novel that . . . has never finished saying what it has to say. . . . Read today some sixty years since its original publication at the end of a pandemic amid wars and totalitarian governments and a radical climate crisis . . . [it] continues to accompany us to question us to challenge and move us and ultimately to help us in the arduous and terrible exercise of reading the world.” ―<b>Alejandro Zambra from the Foreword</b> <b>Alejo Carpentier</b> (1904–1980) was one of the major Latin American writers of the twentieth century as well as a classically trained pianist and musicologist. His best-known novels are <i>The Lost Steps</i> <i>Explosion in a Cathedral</i> and <i>The Kingdom of This World</i>. Born in Lausanne Switzerland and raised in Havana Cuba Carpentier lived for many years in France and Venezuela before returning to Cuba after the 1959 revolution. A few years later he returned to France where he lived until his death. <br><b>Adrian Nathan West</b> (translator) has translated more than thirty books from Spanish Catalan and German including Benjamin Labatut’s <i>When We Cease to Understand the World</i> a finalist for both the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the International Booker Prize. He is the author of <i>The Aesthetics of Degradation</i> and the novel <i>My Father’s Diet</i> and his essays and literary criticism have appeared in <i>The New York Review of Books London Review of Books The Times Literary Supplement</i> and <i>The Baffler</i>. He lives in Philadelphia.<br><b>Alejandro Zambra</b> (foreword) is the award-winning author of the novels <i>Chilean Poet</i><i> Ways of Going Home</i><i> The Private Lives of Trees</i> and <i>Bonsai</i> as well as two other works of fiction: <i>Multiple Choice</i> and <i>My Documents</i>. His short stories have been published in <i>The New Yorker</i> <i>The New York Times Magazine</i> <i>The Paris Review</i> <i>Granta</i> and <i>Harper’s Magazine</i>. Born in Santiago Chile Zambra lives in Mexico City. <b>“If Carpentier is ever to get a new reading in English it should be now. . . . West’s translations . . . reintroduce English-language readers to this giant of Latin American fiction.” —Natasha Wimmer <i>The New York Review of Books</i><br><br>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<br><br>A Penguin Classic</b><br><br>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.<br><br>For more than seventy-five years Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2000 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.