“Liberté, égalité, fraternité” – No. The true symbol of revolution was guillotine.Those who didn’t need to be liberated from everything were beheaded. Those who didn’t want to be equal with everybody around were decapitated. Those who didn’t wish to become anyone’s brother were guillotined…The guillotine had begun to form part of normal everyday life. Amongst the parsley and the marjoram, miniature guillotines were sold as ornaments, and many people took them home. Children exerted their ingenui...

The Kingdom of this World was a charred little fable of revolutionary violence – vengeful voodoo, conspiratorial caves, signal drums in the night; a revolt of slaves, “senseless and merciless” – and I sought out Explosion in a Cathedral hoping for something in that line. The novel’s scope is broader, embracing, as Carpentier writes in his afterward, “the whole area of the Caribbean” in a time of revolution, abolition, piracy and war. Explosion in a Cathedral (the original Spanish title is pointe...

Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier is a book that comes alive on several simultaneous levels. Ostensibly, it’s a novel about eighteenth century adventurers. Carlos, Sofia and Estaban emerge from the kind of familial challenges that beset most lives at some stage in any lifetime lived in that age. They are from Havana, a Spanish colony offering necessary and essential loyalty to a King, a King removed from local reality in both space and experience. But there is revolution in the air. F...

When the only hope that remains in our lives is death, then it means that we are living in dangerous times. What is the source of our problems as a humanity? The answer is inequality. Death is the only summons which we all must obey and the only sure solution to the oppression we live with. In this book we see men like Victor who dedicate their lives to the revolution. It is set during the colonialist period. A time when slavery was the only way of getting rich. Things were so bad, blacks had re...

Explosion in a Cathedral might be described as a steaming Monte Cristo sandwich or perhaps better yet a Cuban boucan. I loved this mixture of swashbuckling romance and the dense history of the French Revolution’s implosion as it crosses the sensuously magical Caribbean. But a warning for those not intrigued by history, you may find yourself becalmed by the large middle expanse of the book. Drawn from real life, Carpentier’s tragic anti-hero Victor Hughes contains within him one third Edmond Dant...

Its technically good but I couldnt get into it

The French Revolution told from a new angle, for the main plot occurs in the West Indies and in Carribean(St Domingue, Cuba). Historical novels rarely suit the historian in me, but this is one of the best books ever written. I read El Siglo de la Luces in French(also known as Explosion in a Cathedral), a long time ago, and it has stayed with me until now. A classic. Really marvellous.

actually I would give this book 3 and a half stars since it's true that it took me some time to finally get along with it and catch up the rhythm but this book really gets better as it goes and I ended up liking it a lot. it's s good way to get to know the history about 19th century revolutions both sides of the atlantic, including those chapters and people evolved not so known. (thank you for the gift, i)

Read it in Spanish - a fascinating portrayal of life during the chaotic political period that followed the French Revolution, as seen through the eyes of Esteban, whom we first meet as a very young man brought up in Havana Cuba in the 1790's and belonging to a comfortable urban upper middle-class native-born white family (i.e "criollos" in Spanish). His interests in the writings of precursors to the Revolution, plus a variety of circumstances led to his travels first to Europe, then to the islan...

The low rating will be controversial among Carpentier's fans. This was "magic realism" (a term he invented) in 1962, years before the Latin American Boom took off after Garcia Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude." (There is a legend, which may be an urban one, that this novel inspired Garcia Marquez to start writing "100 Years".) Carpentier wrote in a prose style and with an accumulation of detail that is perhaps best described by the title of one of his othernovels: "Baroque Concert." The p...

My favourite book!!! I don`t have an exact word to explain why I love it this book....I think that is the merit to try of say us how this amazing age (illustrated on thousands of books) afected the most simple people (since of our caribbean point of view) and how this people lived this experience....I guess that is the possibility of a truly change in our lives is my atraction with this book, and I really apreciate it becasuse I readed in a moment that I need this perspective....

It is definitely an interesting book to read although it covers events from totally different epoch and part of the world. It made me realise how the mankind has progressed in its attitude to human rights and so on for the 2 centuries since the events described there. It's a bit more historical for my taste, but I like the description of the world that the 3 young people created for themselves.

I read this in Spanish, the story takes place in Cuba during a time of colonization and cultural changes, the novel reads in the way a person of that time and place would speak if well educated. In an incredibly detailed descriptive way the author really does create scenes that are deeply impressive. I read this using a dictionary not to miss out on anything.

Though it did give insight into Latin American Literature of the era, it was more of a transition into Magical Realism as opposed to a clear participant in the movement.

pretty good, lots of longish ornate sentences. not sure how accurate the translation is tho, it reads ok but is apparently based on the french translation rather than direct from the spanish.

Did a review of this book here: https://youtu.be/RoYkPqQzNG4

The French Revolution and the fall of the Bastille was not just a French event. It was a world event creating a ripple effect in many places around the globe. It is also the main catalyst within the landmark novel “The Age of Enlightenment” (Known in English as Explosion in The Cathedral) by the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier. The novel follows the lives of three aristocratic Cuban orphans, the siblings Sofia and Carlos, their cousin Esteban, and the French adventurer Victor Hugues. The novel mov...

In Explosion in A Cathedral, Carpentier depicts the intense climate of moral purity that existed during the French Revolution. Punishable crimes include showing skepticism about the revolution, hanging around those who were viewed as anti-revolution, playing face cards (as face cards contain symbols of monarchy), playing traditional Catholic hymns, playing music composed by Masons, and holding mass. Carpentier also depicts the hypocrisy inherent in the ever-changing Revolution. One of the protag...

We’ve all have been taught that the French Revolution was carried out for the sake of noblest principles: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” and they told us that it brought centuries of despotism, oppression and monarchy abuses to an end. They showed us pieces of art such as the famous and universally known Delacroix’s Liberty leading the People, images of the noble and oppressive class being executed by the revolution’s army, flames of people’s wrath consuming the castles, symbol of the old ways,

Carpentier's Siglo de las Luces (The Century of Light) presents the story of Víctor Hughes a character ignored in the history of the French Revolution. Through Hughes, the reader follows the direct effect of that social and political upheaval in the Antilles. Along with Hughes’ trajectory, the story of three Cuban brothers (Sofía, Carlos, and Esteban) is depicted and how their lives are intertwined with Hugues’ path. It is prose full of magical realism and rhythmic verses. Carpentier offers a sw...

This book was very enticing to me from the beginning. Set in a time and space frame which is very familiar to me (the period just before the Latin American Independence War in the Spanish Colonies), I could instantly connect with the characters and the environment surrounding them. As the action unfolds, the true subject in the novel reveals itself: how revolutionary ideals become dogma which derives into authoritarianism. I don't know how Cuban authorities took this. Perhaps that is why the end...

Wow, what a fantastic novel. It's common knowledge that most people consider The Chase his greatest work, but I enjoyed this one and got so much more out of it. A book about the French Revolution told from the periphery (i.e., the Caribbean) which grapples with the excesses of the revolution, love, idealism, and imperialism- with most subchapters beginning with titles from de Goya's "Disasters of War"? *chef's kiss*

4 seems a bit high, 3 seems a bit low. I'm not really sure what the book was about. At its core it's the story of how revolutionary ideals can still be racist, and how blind devotion to a revolution (as opposed to having actual principles) is bad. But there's a lot of other stuff happening in the novel as well. It's at least partially historical fiction, so perhaps some of the seeming extra stuff is just history.

Who else but a Cuban could write such poignant historical fiction on the contrast between revolutionary ideals and lived experience? The revolution in this case is the French one, expanding its influence into Caribbean colonies and impacting religion and slavery in the local populace. Memorable but lengthy.

Set in the Caribbeans, it recounts the story of three orphans and their encounter with Victor Hugues (a real historical figure) on the background of the French Revolution.The condensed, long paragraphs full of minute descriptions, although well written, make the reading really hard to proceed. It's also difficult to connect with the characters, who seem mere puppets to carry on the story.

The revolution in the Caribbean. Sweet as a dove, ugly as a roasted pig. The Age of Enlightenment didn't produce cosy fin de siècle. It's a swashbuckling good read. I suspect that Bernardo Bertolucci took the inspiration for the ending of Dreamers in the last chapter.

Thought this would be a book about Cuba but instead learned about the devastating effects of the French Revolution on the Caribbean. It was only after I had finished it that I appreciated the author's skill in depicting this period as his images continue to haunt me

It is a fabulous book, once even the movies was taken to, ensign of love, of friendship, of treason and of the good people, and of the mailbags. You have a very expeditious reading, but you have great complexity like Carpentier's works, but you can get your reading with the help of a dictionary.

Alejo Carpetier is one of the greatest, latin american writers. Understanding latin american literature goes more in the way of Carpentier than Marquez. This is one of his top works.

Having a good time reading this work specially if you enjoy french culture and of course history.