Alejo Carpentier, the pilgrim at home

by Roberto González Echevarría

Book by Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1977

About the author

Roberto González Echevarría is Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale.

Reviews

[Dusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps the single most important book on Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (though it's a bit outdated), The Pilgrim at Home is a kind of literary biography in that it shares Carpentier's life by breaking it into periods that correspond to his literary output. González Echevarría is one of the late twentieth century's most important theorists of Latin American literature, and though he developed a friendship with Carpentier in this book he works his hardest to maintain an objective perspective -- rather, a perspective that allows him to tell the story he, not Carpentier, wants told. It's essential in places, but I get tired quickly with critical texts that break novels into tables and diagrams the way González Echevarría proves, for example, that El reino de este mundo is structured according to the liturgical calendar.