In the following essay, Millington asserts that "there is no doubt that what is achieved in Los pasos perdidos by the narrator is a masculist discourse of exclusion and manipulation, offset by some irony or counterpointed fragmentally when other voices become briefly audible."

In the following essay, Weber analyzes the narrative structure of Manhunt, identifying various thematic motifs related to character and chronological development.

In the following essay, Echevarría examines the many facets of exile present in Carpentier's story, asserting "The critical element of the story sets forth a founding literary myth in Latin America—that of exile—and shows how this myth engenders literature through a process of contradiction and self-denial. "

In Carpentier, as in most modern literature, allegory rests on the possibility of carrying the permutations [of allegory] further, to an idea of transcendence that is itself fictional and changeable. That movement away from each metaphor or conceit (the system of ideas to which allegory refers, and more specifically that movable center on which it rests) occurs at the very moment when the implications of a given philosophy threaten the fictionality of the text, by upsetting the balance of the dialectical pl...

In the following essay, Wyers discusses the influence of history, allegory, nature, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness on Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos.

In the following essay, Weber discusses one of Carpentier's recurrent themes, "the representation, domination, or denial of time," as seen in his El acoso.

In the following essay, Goldberg traces the instances of repetition in Carpentier's El reino de este mundo and discusses what the repetition says about his conception of history.

In the following essay, Stewart traces the dictator's struggle with identity in Carpentier's Reasons of State.

In the following essay, Foster examines Carpentier's thematic adaptation of the medieval Everyman allegory in "Highroad of St. James," demonstrating its moral significance in the context of contemporary literary methods.

In the following essay, Bost asserts, "It is in Concierto barroco that Carpentier most imaginatively combines two of his principal concerns in his exploration of historical America: the play of fact with fictional exposition, and the role of music as a cultural force."

In the following essay, Piedra explores the anti-colonialist discourse in "Tale of Moons," drawing inferences that explain the perseverance of African cultural elements in contemporary Caribbean narratives.

In the following essay, Kirk analyzes the theme of concientización or consciousness-raising as found in Carpentier's work, focusing on El reino de este mundo, Los pasos perididos, and El siglo de las luces.

In the following excerpt, Jiménez-Fajardo details the significance of the inverted temporal progression of "Journey Back to the Source," linking the linguistic implications of the protagonist's search for a unified identity to similar developments in other Latin American texts.

In the following essay, Mason studies the thematic links between time, place, and fragmented narration in "Right of Sanctuary," showing the significance of the story's indeterminacy.

In the following essay, Natella discusses the concept of "theatrum mundi," or "the idea that life is a stage and we are all its actors," as it applies to Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos.

In the following essay, Eiríksdóttir discusses Carpentier's use of irony in his earlier work.

In the following essay, Giacoman details how Manhunt reflects in its characters and structure the themes and design of Beethoven's Eroica.

In the following excerpt, Verzasconi discusses the thematic and symbolic development of the Sisyphus myth in "Highroad of St. James," drawing parallels between Carpentier's adaptation and Albert Camus' efforts in Myth de Sisyphe.

In the following essay, Verzasconi discusses how Carpentier uses the myth of Sisyphus in his portrayal of Juan in "El Camino de Santiago."

In the following interview, Carpentier discusses his latest three novels, Concierto barroco, El recurso del método, and a work in progress.

In the following essay, Feigenbaum examines the function of music in Concierto barroco and in the novel The Lost Steps.

In the following essay, Townsend discusses the thematic similarities between Manhunt and the novel The Lost Steps, concentrating on the role of music in the texts.

El Acoso, in addition to its many virtues as a novella, is a rare successful attempt meaningfully and consistently to represent in a literary work the complex structure, tone, and rhythm of a specific musical work (Beethoven's Eroica). (p. 103) Both works of art represent radical creative departures for Beethoven and Carpentier. The Eroica is a symphony that revolutionized symphonic structure—the continuous and organic mode of connecting the second subject with the first, the introduction of e...

[Some] readers may have … decided that indeed the reasons for Carpentier's failure to capture an audience here are those same reasons put forth by the earliest reviewers: that his fiction is too "erudite," that he is more a "cultural historian" than a novelist,… or that he is a "tiresome philosophizer."… One may quarrel with some of these negative views, but on the question of the absence of a substantial audience for the novelist'...

What a spacious, noble view of fiction [Carpentier] has, proposing not chemisms, the darkling plain, the long arm of coincidence, the involuntary memory, the absurd,…, but a vision of the horn of plenty forever exploding, forever settling in bits that belong together more than they don't because there is nothing else for them to do. In Carpentier the All and the One remain unknown, and suspect even, but the aggregate of the Many, gorgeous and higgledy-piggledy, does duty for them, never constr...

In the following assessment of The War of Time, Good-sell finds Carpentier's tales inferior to his novels, but considers them significant for the light they shed on Carpentier's craft.

Latin America has long worn two conflicting masks. One expresses charm, gaiety, sentiment, a mood of comic opera and a long-running belle époque. The other suggests torture, massacres, tyrants, and endlessly trampled constitutions. Are the masks connected? Is the first a consolation for the second? Does the second rely on the frivolous complicity of the first?… [A tyrant in Carpentier's Reasons of State] thinks of Latin American history as an unreal suspension of time…. [The nove...

In the following review, Keates assesses the thematic and stylistic features of Concierto barroco, calling the work "a notable exemplar" of Latin American narrative.

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. Carp...

From the point of view of strictly revolutionary literary ethics ["Explosion in a Cathedral"] was a curiously evasive achievement, dramatizing as it did the contradictory allegiances between private sensibility and public ideology. The two principal characters found themselves driven either toward a lucid, contemplative humanism or a draconian revolutionary spirit formed under the inevitable shadow and example of Saint-Just. Though it was set in the Antilles of the 18th century, most readers t...