The Bibliographical Collections and Archives of the Fundación Alejo Carpentier, Cuba

Abstract

The great Latin American novelist Alejo Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 26 December 1904, to a French father and Russian mother. Some years later, the family settled in the outskirts of Fdavana, Cuba. Carpentier's literary and musical sensibility became apparent from a very early age. In 1922, he began his journalistic career. Fie was imprisoned for some weeks during the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado and, in 1928, after being given Cuban nationality, he was able to move to France where he joined the Surrealist group. In Paris, he became a correspondent for Cuban magazines and also wrote for French and Latin American publications. It was during this period that he concluded his first novel, iEcue-Yamba-O!, which was first published in Spain. In 1939 he returned to Cuba where he continued his journalistic work, also publishing some short stories and undertaking research for what would later become La musica en Cuba (1946).1 In 1945, he moved to Venezuela in order to work in radio, which gave him more time for journalism and literary production. It was during this period that some of his most significant works were published: El reino de este mundo (1949); El acoso (1956); Guerra del tiempo (1956); and Los pasos perdidos (1953). It was also where he wrote El siglo de las luces (1962).2 After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, he settled permanently in Cuba and took up several cultural posts (this is also where El siglo de las luces was first published). In 1966, he was appointed to a diplomatic post in France; it was there that he collated and published a large number of his essays, as well as writing his last novels: El recurso del metodo (1974); Concierto barroco (1974); La consagracion de la primavera (1978); El arpa y la sombra (1979).3 Carpentier died in Paris on 24 April 1980. During his lifetime, he received many national and international awards, including the international Cino del Duca World Prize and the Spanish Miguel de Cervantes Prize for literature in the Spanish language. He is considered to be one of the most representative Latin American authors of the twentieth century and one of the first writers to be recognised in the Latin American 'boom'.The Fundacion Alejo Carpentier (FAC) was created by the writer's widow, Lilia Esteban Carpentier, who bequeathed before her death all her goods, including those inherited from her husband. In 1982, she established the Centro de Promocion Cultural Alejo Carpentier (Alejo Carpentier Centre for Cultural Promotion) which in 1993 became the FAC. The FAC is a cultural NGO whose principal objective is to disseminate the life and work of Carpentier through the following areas of action: by supporting Cuban and non-Cuban research on this topic; by publishing, in Cuba and elsewhere, Carpentier's oeuvre, both known and hitherto unpublished; by conserving and restoring the bibliographical collections and archives; and by generally disseminating the archives through organising conferences, postgraduate courses and exhibitions. The FAC is based in two headquarters: the first, in the Habana Vieja area of the Cuban capital, is located in the mansion which was the inspiration for the house inhabited by the protagonists of El siglo de las luces (intelligently restored thanks to the efforts of the Oficina del Historiador de La Habana [Office of the Historian of Havana]); the other headquarters, where the directorate is located, is the former residence of the novelist and his wife, where the latter lived until her death in 2008, located in the Vedado neighbourhood of Havana.4The FAC has negotiated publishing agreements with publishers in many countries around the world, which help the writer's work become known in many different languages. In Cuba, the most important relationship with publishers is maintained with Editorial Letras Cubanas, under the Instituto Cubano del Libro (Cuban Book Institute), which has established the Biblioteca Alejo Carpentier (Alejo Carpentier Library). …