“El Reino de este Mundo/The Kingdom of this World” Alejo Carpentier

This was one of my required readings for Spanish Culture in the summer of 2009, but (and I hope my Spanish teacher does not read this) I didn’t finish it until January of 2010. As many students of Spanish do, I bought both the Spanish and English versions of the book. My reading strategy last summer was to read a chapter in Spanish, marking up the book with questions and vocabulary to learn, and then I would read the same chapter in English. This was a great test of how good my reading comprehension in Spanish was, and I got immediate feedback on the vocabulary and passages that were troublesome. Since then, I have improved my Spanish comprehension and have completed books in Spanish only, but at the time, this was how I survived the class. I had only read 2/3 of the book by the end of the class and finished it up a couple of weeks ago.

This book begins before the revolution that freed Haiti from the French and uses the life of the slave Ti Noel to describe life in Haiti under the rule of the French, Henri Christophe and after. I think of life in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth centuries as running at a slower pace, and I was amazed at how tumultuous the life of Ti Noel is. In some ways, this book reminds me of “The Good Earth” by Pearl Buck. Ti Noel does not have family traveling with him, but like the family in the “The Good Earth” and due to political and economic upheaval, he is forced to move from place to place and when he returns home things are never the same.

The chapters describing the building of the Citadelle under Henri Christophe’s rule were difficult to read in Spanish because I wasn’t sure whether the stories were that fantastic or if I was misreading the Spanish, but it seems the stories about the cruelty involved were true. In general, what happens to Ti Noel throughout his life is so far removed from my life experience that I have difficulty connecting to it, but the historical aspects of this book make me realize that the earthquake in Haiti is just another in a long line of devastating events in that country over several centuries.

Of course, one of the main features of the book is magical realism, especially involving the character Macandal. Often the traditionally aged students in my Spanish classes did not appreciate the magical realism of Marquez and other writers, but I actually look for this in Latin American writing. I thought the best parts of the books were the chapters describing the transformations and travels of Macandal and was a little disappointed that he or similar characters did not occur throughout the book.

For more information, Marvin T. Jones has some great pictures and stories of the Citadelle.