Carpentier digs into the past; it almost seems as if he cannot get away from it, even in his novel The Lost Steps, which is contemporary in time but is really a search for origins—the origin first of music and then of the whole concept of civilization. Taken together, the elements of the search form a mosaic of the factors that went into the making of Latin America….

Heretofore, the analysis of Latin America, with a few exceptions, has been either superficial or an exercise in patriotics. Carpentier has looked deeper, always keeping a historical perspective. He is particularly attuned to the French influence, which other authors have too often neglected—except as a cliché. Haiti and the French pirates of the Caribbean have been the subjects of two previous Carpentier novels, Explosion in a Cathedral and The Kingdom of the World. In this new novel, too...