Runner-Up for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize "Penguin Classics has recently published sensational new translations of two of Carpentier's novels, The Lost Steps (1953) and Explosion in a Cathedral (1962). What made them influential, and makes them so dazzlingly readable still, is their style. Needless to say, this marriage of style and subject would be illegible to English-language readers without a first-rate translator, and in Adrian Nathan West, Penguin Classics has found their man." -- The Wall Street Journal "An erudite yet absorbing adventure story . A book full of riches--stylistic, sensory, visual." -- The New York Times Book Review "Carpentier's novels are full of luscious descriptions of nature. His descriptions of food and drink are exquisite. The mannered intensity of Carpentier's language--maintained at fever pitch by West--propels the reader.

Every sentence in the novel [is] freighted with learning and a passion for high art. What the reader takes away overall from West's translation is a freshness and bite and aesthetic ambition that match Carpentier's." -- Natasha Wimmer, The New York Review of Books "Extraordinary." -- The New Yorker "The most remarkable translating feat I encountered in 2023 comes courtesy of Adrian Nathan West, who in The Lost Steps and Explosion in a Cathedral brings the almost orgiastically baroque prose of Alejo Carpentier into glorious English." -- Sam Sacks of The Wall Street Journal , via Twitter "The grace and energy of [this translation] are of a high standard." -- The Bulwark "An absolutely magnificent piece of literature . The prose is mesmerizing, and it's one of those books where I just want to have it tattooed on me in its entirety to keep with me forever." -- BuzzFeed "The greatest novel to have appeared in Latin America in our time.

" -- Le Figaro Littéraire "Beautiful and stirring . One of [Carpentier's] finest works . which for many readers is the most alluring of his novels." Leonardo Padura, from the Introduction.