Tag: around the world in 80 books

Review: The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier

The Kingdom of This World [1949/57] – ★★★★★

One always comes to Alejo Carpentier’s books with a kind of trepidation mixed with delicious expectation. The knowledge that threading through his labyrinth of prose will come with transcendental insights or unheard-of wonders makes his novels hard to resist. If I previously termed his novel The Lost Steps “a stimulating read of one extraordinary journey of self-discovery,” Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World is a less introspective but also much more intense reading experience as the author turns his attention to the 1791-1804 revolution in Haiti, a place Carpentier visited in 1943. In turbulent Haiti, we see the world through the eyes of slave Ti Noël, whose master is squire and plantation owner M. Lenormand de Mézy. Ti Noël’s early idealization of one-armed man and mystic Macandal, the Mandingue, will eventually involve him in one of the world’s bloodiest revolutions. Mixing mythology, superstition, and the alleged cyclical nature of history, Carpentier takes no prisoners in this increasingly provocative, horrifying, but also absolutely enthralling novel of hell born of good intentions.

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Damascus Nights by Rafik Schami + Reading Around the World (Vol. 2)

Damascus Nights [1989/95] – ★★★★

German-Syrian author’s novel relies heavily on the Al-Qaskhun/Al-Hakawati or Storyteller tradition of the Middle East (think One Thousand and One Nights) to tell the story of one coachman Salim, who, inexplicably, lost his voice even though he is a gifted storyteller. The year is 1959, the place is Damascus, Syria, and Salim’s seven loyal friends started to devise ingenious ways to enable Salim to talk again. One of the solutions proposed is that each of Salim’s friends should tell him his own story, and when Salim hears them all, he would be able to speak again (“the curse of his muteness will be broken”). So, begins the whirlpool of fables blending seamlessly reality and fiction to one spellbinding effect, as each of Salim’s friends – locksmith Ali, geography teacher Mehdi, barber Musa, former statesman Faris, Tuma, the “emigrant”, café owner Junis, and once unjustly imprisoned Isam, all try to outsmart and outspeak each other. However, is Salim the cleverest and slyest of them all in the end?

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