Canonized for his major works of the fifties and early sixties Los pasos perdidos, Guerra del tiempo, and El siglo de las luces, Alejo Carpentier is a patriarch in the world of hispanic letters. His latest novels, Concierto barroco (Mexico, 1974) and El recurso del método (Mexico, 1974) have added to his stature, although their critical reception reminds us that the stage has widened considerably with the passing years. If that is so, it is partly because of Carpentier's own literary struggle to refocus the Latin American experience from new dramatic and linguistic perspectives and to stretch the broad frame of his own complex cultural heritage. The grateful reception abroad of his efforts has demonstrated to younger writers that there was a stage, and indeed a hungry audience, beyond the provincial world of our modern capitals.

Carpentier has unlocked doors to the colonial past, the South American jungle, the rural bodegas, and his symbolic characters have come forth upon the universal stage to don the livery of the moment-a failed revolutionary, a black king, a founder of jungle towns. We sensed the fragility of the actors, swept along by the forceful chords of a baroque ensemble, and we learn to sense and recognize the basso continuum beneath their brief solos. The young artist in search of a voice, of the 20's and 30's and early 40's, laboring in prose fiction with the renovating concepts stated discursively years later in the prologue to El reino de este mundo (Mexico, 1949) and in Tientos y diferencias (Mexico, 1964), is the subject of this book. I intend to show the artist in his early evolutionary paths, isolating recurring themes and stylistic devices.