The Kingdom of this World

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The Kingdom of this World (Spanish: El Reino de este Mundo) is a novel by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, first published in 1949. It tells the story of Haiti before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution. It is an important work in the development of magical realism.

[edit] Plot introduction

The novel centers on the brutal evolution of Haiti's history after winning its independence from French colonial rule in a bloody revolution. The initial jubilance was quashed by the subesquent corruption and incompetence of the Haitian leadership. Haitian blacks had long been subjugated to the domimation of white control. In the face of disillusionment following their independence, they clung to their African traditions and rituals to make palatable the misery of their lives.^[1]. The story is told from the point of view of a slave.

The above is an imcomplete and somewhat misleading description of The Kingdom of This World. Rather than 'center[ing] on' post-independence Haiti, the novel actually begins in the 1750s, the time of the necromancer Mackandal, and spreads over the next three-quarters of a century. Only its last half covers the tyrannical rule of Henri Christophe. Moreover, although the principal character, Ti Noel, lives the first forty years or so of his life as a slave, he is at least nominally free by 1801; and to his the 'point of view' of the novel is not entirely accurate. There is one section in part 2 in which he is not present (this is the story of Pauline Bonaparte's journey to St. Domingue with her husband, General Leclerc, and their subsequent miseries on the offshore island of La Tortuga: miseries both personal and military. Finally, it is perhaps mistaken to call The Kingdom of This World a historical novel of the Haitian Revolution, for the crucial decade of 1792-1802 is not narrated, nor are its events mentioned, nor are its pricincipal ex-slave agents, Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, mentioned.