The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier

In the preface to this work, Alejo Carpentier employs the phrase lo real maravilloso—which translates as "the marvelous real"—delineating a literary attitude that would pervade Latin American fiction over the next half century. In the hands of other, better known writers, this approach would gain legitimacy under the label "magical realism," but many co…