Alejo Carpanter

Born December 26, 1904, in Lausanne to French and Russian parents, Carpentier grew up in Havana and claimed Cuba as his own despite the European birth certificate. His leftist politics landed him in jail and exile, and his travels through France, Mexico, and South America connected him to the artists and revolutionaries remaking Latin American culture. A trained musicologist, he published La música en Cuba and wove Afro-Cuban music and history into everything he wrote. His 1949 novel El reino de este mundo, about the Haitian revolution, became the definitive early example of lo real maravilloso - the marvelous real - a technique he pioneered before the "boom" writers made it famous. He blended baroque style with surrealist theory, and his novels carried enough gravity to shape a generation of Cuban and Latin American writers who came after. He died in Paris on April 24, 1980, and was buried in Havana among the island's political and artistic dead.