Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier, born Alejo Carpentier y Valmont, was a Cuban novelist, essayist and musicologist who is best known for his novels, though he wrote journalism, opera libretti and academic essays. His 1949 novel The Kingdom of This World, about the Haitian revolution, is one of the earliest major works of magical realism. His other novels include Explosion in a Cathedral, set against the French Revolution in the Caribbean, and The Lost Steps. Carpentier died in Paris in 1980, and his fiction often draws on Cuban music and history.