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The Kingdom of This World: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Alejo Carpentier
Creators: Edwidge Danticat, Harriet De Onis
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
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Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 44124
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 190
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0374530114
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9780374530112
ASIN: 0374530114
Publication Date: May 16, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081014212734T
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Product Description
A few years after its liberation from the brutality of French colonial rule in 1803, Haiti endured a period of even greater brutality under the reign of King Henri-Christophe, who was born a slave in Grenada but rose to become the first black king in the Western Hemisphere. In prose of often dreamlike coloration and intensity, Alejo Carpentier records the destruction of the black regime—built on the same corruption and contempt for human life that brought down the French while embodying the same hollow grandeur of false elegance, attained only through slave labor—in an orgy of voodoo, race hatred, madness, and erotomania.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 "determined to invoke the marvellous at any cost, the miracle workers turn into bureaucrats" October 14, 2007
C. Gilbert (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Carpentier, the revered Cuban novelist who died in 1980, published The Kingdom of This World in 1949. The novel focuses on the history of the Haitian Revolution, as told through the eyes of Ti Noel. Ti Noel is an old slave who sees much sameness in the difference between the two reigning periods of decadence and brutality. He leaves Haiti for Cuba as a slave lost in a game of cards. He returns to witness the decadence of the rule of Henri Christophe.
Ti Noel is the embodiment of the hope of the oppressed for not just simple revolution, but also for a kind of spiritual freedom-- following the original example set by Mackandal. There is a strong sense that this hope comes from embracing their original African spirituality and not from following the example set by the colonizing French.
While the material is certainly interesting, I had some problem finding a way to access the text. I am not sure if it is an artifact of the translation or Carpentier's voice itself, but I had the feeling that the prose was keeping me at a distance from the characters. I am inclined to think that this was done expressly. Carpentier uses a variety of literary devices which drive the reader away from identification-- short and choppy chapters, a variety of quotations, the magical realism so predominant in Latin American fiction of the time. I am sure that there are all kinds of valid structural and qualitative reasons why such an approach works with the material, but I often had the frustrating feeling of scrabbling at the surface of the text. I could not quite get my head under water. I admired the book, but I found that I had trouble liking it.
I had picked this up because I had wanted to read something by Carpentier. And now I have. I was impressed enough to want to go on and read further in his body of work. Leave a comment if you can recommend one of his books that perhaps is a little bit warmer, or more accessible. This should not be read as a slight on The Kingdom of the World. I am more than willing to admit that my issues with the novel are likely to be a sign of my shortcomings as a reader more than anything else.
Liberty mocked July 21, 2006
Luan Gaines (Dana Point, CA USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The crux of the novel is 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 years the blacks suffer the yoke of white oppression, clinging to their African gods, ritual superstitions the only balm to a tortured existence: "Oh father, my father, how long is the suffering?" The social order is built upon exploitation of the many for the comfort of the few, the servant class treated as beasts of burden, beaten, beheaded and used to slake the intemperate urges of white masters. A verdant jungle of natural beauty, Haiti has the appearance of paradise and, for the blacks, the reality of hell, the indulgence and decadence of the plantation owners in counterpoint to the misery of the enslaved.
History is revealed through the eyes of a slave, Ti Noel, and through him the social duplicity is exposed. Drawn to the tribal wisdom and ancestral stories of Macandal, Ti Noel reflects the yearning of the slave population for a release from long injustice. Resorting to folk wisdom, voodoo ceremonies and ancestral worship of ancient animus, Macandal whips his followers into a revolt that comes to fruition one fateful night, the drums of bloody opportunity beating across the island as machete-bearing slaves overrun the sleeping plantations, slaughtering all in their path, masters, livestock, women and children. Once the uprising is put down, the search for Macandal proves fruitless, although he is eventually discovered, captured and burned before the downcast eyes of the slaves. The believers see only Macandal's spirit rise from the flames, knowing he will return in other forms to guide them.
Having survived the treachery, Ti Noel's master escapes with him to Santiago de Cuba, where the he embarks on a life of decadence, the slave finally lost in a card game. Years later, returning to Haiti a free man, Ti Noel is confronted with a changed island, now ruled by King Henri Christophe, a black kingdom, the black royalty inflicting the same pain as the white masters, the natural enslavement of the powerless, Christophe's every achievement purchased on the backs of the oppressed. Ti Noel despairs this "endless cycle of chains", convinced that freedom is but an idea, a despot forever hovering in the wings of history. In brilliant imagery and bloody prose, Haiti's drama unfolds, the pomp and grandeur of the new regime constructed from the same contempt for human life as the French and destined fro the same destruction: insurrection fueled by madness and the slaughter of the oppressor. pp Luan Gaines/ 2006.
"In overthrowing me, you have cut only the trunk of the tree of liberty." May 21, 2006
Luan Gaines (Dana Point, CA USA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The crux of the novel is 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 years the blacks suffer the yoke of white oppression, clinging to their African gods, ritual superstitions the only balm to a tortured existence: "Oh father, my father, how long is the suffering?" The social order is built upon exploitation of the many for the comfort of the few, the servant class treated as beasts of burden, beaten, beheaded and used to slake the intemperate urges of white masters. A verdant jungle of natural beauty, Haiti has the appearance of paradise and, for the blacks, the reality of hell, the indulgence and decadence of the plantation owners in counterpoint to the misery of the enslaved.
History is revealed through the eyes of a slave, Ti Noel, and through him the social duplicity is exposed. Drawn to the tribal wisdom and ancestral stories of Macandal, Ti Noel reflects the yearning of the slave population for a release from long injustice. Resorting to folk wisdom, voodoo ceremonies and ancestral worship of ancient animus, Macandal whips his followers into a revolt that comes to fruition one fateful night, the drums of bloody opportunity beating across the island as machete-bearing slaves overrun the sleeping plantations, slaughtering all in their path, masters, livestock, women and children. Once the uprising is put down, the search for Macandal proves fruitless, although he is eventually discovered, captured and burned before the downcast eyes of the slaves. The believers see only Macandal's spirit rise from the flames, knowing he will return in other forms to guide them.
Having survived the treachery, Ti Noel's master escapes with him to Santiago de Cuba, where the he embarks on a life of decadence, the slave finally lost in a card game. Years later, returning to Haiti a free man, Ti Noel is confronted with a changed island, now ruled by King Henri Christophe, a black kingdom, the black royalty inflicting the same pain as the white masters, the natural enslavement of the powerless, Christophe's every achievement purchased on the backs of the oppressed. Ti Noel despairs this "endless cycle of chains", convinced that freedom is but an idea, a despot forever hovering in the wings of history. In brilliant imagery and bloody prose, Haiti's drama unfolds, the pomp and grandeur of the new regime constructed from the same contempt for human life as the French and destined fro the same destruction: insurrection fueled by madness and the slaughter of the oppressor. Luan Gaines/ 2006.
The Kingdom of This World July 29, 2004
Damian Kelleher (Brisbane, Australia)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
The Kingdom of This World loosely traces the life of Ti Noel, a solitary Negro who is a slave first under the yoke of a heartless white man, then under the infinitely more brutal reign of a former Negro slave, and finally, upon attaining old age and discovering the voodoo magic that is inherent in all Haiti men, he becomes a slave to his own flesh, to the ideals of humanity, and to the artificial thoughts and designs of man.
Carpentier's writing evokes an older time, we can practically feel the sun-drenched lakes and the harsh yellow earth of Noel's homeland. The French are the masters here, they herd Negroes about as cattle, using them to build, to tend, to feed, to nurture. Unmarried French men have no problem with using a Negro woman for a 'bed-warmer', and even less with throwing her to the meanest and darkest jobs available once their marriage is secured. Uprisings are common, and carry the hint of the magical about them, but eventually, the French always seem to prevail. Until the one armed insurgent, Macandal. Using ancient magic, he poisons the French, killing hundreds in an unseen storm of death that spares no-one, not the women, not the children. When he is finally apprehended, he uses magic to escape and the Negroes laugh at the hopeless French, while the white men look on, puzzled, at the 'callous black men' laughing as their leader dies.
Noel manages to secure freedom from slavery when he is an old man, and he returns to the place where he was first a slave, where he first met Macandal, to see what has become of this place. There, King Henri Christophe, a self-proclaimed Negro king who does little more than imitate court-life of the Europeans, is building a towering citadel with the blood of other Negroes. Noel is horrified that a black man would enslave another black man, and what is worse is that the King's dealings with the slaves are much more severe and unforgiving than the white men ever were. It is here that a mirror is placed up to the Negroes, Noel does not like what he sees.
The writing is very illustrative; scenes and times are painted in our mind's eyes with ease. The narrator manages to place himself very far away from the narration, unwilling to pass judgment on either the black men or the white, instead reserving this to the reader. Noel himself is never used as a mere mouthpiece for the author's ideas, instead he is the observer, from youth to old age, from sadness to sadness. When he discovers magic and tries to introduce himself into the animal's way of life, he does not succeed, and is instead forced to learn how to be a human living amongst humans, no matter how unfair, how violent, how short-sighted they may be.
But this distance hurts the novel, too. Since the narrator never really enters the minds and hearts of the characters, we are left with largely ambiguous motives. Also, the voodoo of the Negroes is something that was lost on me, and I was unable to ascertain whether this extensive witchcraft was used as a writing tool to display good, evil, or neither. The shortness of the novel is actually a hindrance, as too little time is spent fleshing out scenes that might benefit from it. However, in the end, this novel serves as a wonderful fable of what it is to be a man living in a world that he may not agree with, as well as illuminating some of the darker periods of history that we have experienced.
 The Kingdom of this World June 7, 2000
29 out of 30 found this review helpful
Not long after Haiti's liberation from French colonial rule, King Henri-Christophe reigned through an era of chaos, violence, superstition and socio-political upheaval. Carpentier details the story of this era, and the eventual overthrowing of Henri-Christophe's black regime, through the narrative of slave Ti-Noel. For me, the interesting thing about this book was the way in which Carpentier shows how the black regime failed on the same sort of grounds that caused the French regime to become corrupt, outwardly oppulent and inwardly self-destructive. I find it very reminiscent of the sort of dialogue popularized by Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" where he explains how, in an effort to overthrow an oppressive system of education (but this has to work, to some extent, for politics, culture, etc) the rebels end up instituting essentially the same sort of system---only with themselves at the top instead of bottom. The novel also deals convincingly with issues of cultural patrimony, the occult, and obviously with historical and political scenario. As with many of his books, Carpentier combines a strong dedication to the factual or realistic history with allegory, metaphor and allusion. The writing style is fairly dense and I did find it difficult to read the novel straight through. However, I found the read very rewarding and also enlightening.
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