Publication of this well-wrought translation of El acoso , a 1956 work by Cuba's outstanding 20th-century writer, marks the first time that this novel has appeared in English as a separate volume. The time frame of the plot, which consists primarily of the events surrounding a ticket seller and a fugitive's seeking refuge in a concert hall, runs contemporaneously with a performance of the Eroica Symphony. Although generally recognized as one of Carpentier's masterpieces, this novella is probably one of his most inaccessible, in part because of the multiple, disjointed narrations and the polyphonic structure. One hopes that it will be appreciated by more than its guaranteed audience of literature students for whom the original Spanish version is too abstruse.
- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio

Translated into twenty languages and published in more than fourteen Spanish editions, The Lost Steps, originally published in 1953, is Alejo Carpentier's most heralded novel. A composer, fleeing an empty existence in New York City, takes a journey with his mistress to one of the few remaining areas of the world not yet touched by civilization -- the upper reaches of a great South American river. The Lost Steps describes his search, his adventures, and the remarkable decision he makes in a village that seems to be truly outside history. **

One of the most significant novels in Latin American literature, written by Cuba's most important modern novelist - to win a bet with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

In the early 1970s, friends Gabriel García Márquez, Augusto Roa Bastos and Alejo Carpentier reached a joint decision: they would each write a novel about the dictatorships then wreaking misery in Latin America. García Márquez went on to write The Autumn of the Patriarch and Roa Bastos I, the Supreme. The third novel in this remarkable trinity is Reasons of State, hailed as
the most significant novel ever to come out of Cuba. As with Garcia Marquez, Reasons of State is a bold story, boldly told --- daring in its perceptions, rich in lush detail, inventive in prose, and deadly compelling in its suspenseful plot. Inexplicably out of print for years, it tells the tale of the dictator of an unnamed Latin American country who has been living the life of luxury in high-society Paris. When news reaches him of a coup at home, he rushes back and crushes it with brutal military force. But returning to Paris he is given a chilly welcome, and learns that photographs of the atrocities have been circulating
among his well-to-do friends. Meanwhile World War One has broken out, and another rebellion forces the dictator back across the ocean. As he struggles with the Marxist forces beginning to find footing in his own country, and Europe is devastated, Carpentier constructs a masterful and biting satire of the new world order.