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 regimebuilt 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 laborin an orgy of voodoo, race hatred, madness, and erotomania. Alejo Carpentierwas born in Havana in 1904. He lived for many years in France and Venezuela but returned to Cuba after the revolution. One of the major Latin American writers of this century, he is the author ofThe Lost Steps,Explosion in a Cathedral, andThe Chase. He died in Paris in 1980. A few years after its liberation from French colonialist rule, Haiti experienced a period of unsurpassed brutality, horror, and superstition under the reign of the black King Henri-Christophe. Through the eyes of the ancient slave Ti-Noel,The Kingdom of This Worldrecords the destruction of the black regimebuilt on the same corruption and contempt for human life that brought down the Frenchin an orgy of voodoo, race hatred, erotomania, and fantastic grandeurs of false elegance. "Carpentier's writing has the power and range of a cathedral organ on the eve of the Resurrection."The New Yorker "Carpentier's writing has the power and range of a cathedral organ on the eve of the Resurrection."The New Yorker "Carpentier's energy is gigantic and pell-mell, sweeping colossi on top of each other with ruthless, contemptuous daring."The Yale Review "Carpentier creates a brilliant, improbable world which has the stylized reality of the great myths."The Atlantic Monthly "The Kingdom of This Worldpacks literary dynamite. There can be no disputing the fact, Carpentier is equipped with an elegant perception and a distinctive style which make him a writer to be classed with Thomas Mann and W. H. Hudson."San Francisco Chronicle