Alejo Carpentier was born in Havana in 1904, son of a French architect who had settled in the Antilles two years earlier. In 1921 he abandoned his architecture studies and professionally devoted himself to journalism, joining the then-called "Grupo Minorista". In 1924 he was appointed director of the magazine Carteles. Imprisoned for political reasons during the Machado regime, he began writing Ecue-Yamba-O. That same year he participated in the founding of the magazine "Avance". In 1928 he clandestinely embarked for France, where he remained until 1939. Returning to Cuba, he got a job in radio. He traveled to various countries in America and settled in Venezuela from 1945 until 1959, when he returned to Cuba, where he directed the National Publisher. From the end of 1966 he resided in Paris, where he held an important diplomatic position, until his death in 1980. Carpentier published the fiction books Ecue-Yamba-O, The Kingdom of This World (first edition, 1949), The Lost Steps (1953), War of Time (1956), The Chase (1958; Seix Barral, 1987), The Century of the Lights (1952; Seix Barral, 1965), Reasons of State (1974), Baroque Concert (1974), The Consecration of Spring (1978) and The Harp and the Shadow (1979).
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