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Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904
– April 24, 1980) was a Cuban  novelist,
essay writer, and musicologist who greatly
influenced Latin American literature during its
famous "boom" period.

Carpentier was born in Havana. His mother was a
Russia|Russian professor of languages and his
father was a France|French architect. At 12, his
family moved to Paris, where he began to study
music theory. When they returned to Cuba, he began
a study of architecture which he never completed.
He became a leftist journalist and spent some time
in prison before going into exile in France. There
he was introduced to the surrealists, including
André Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques
Prévert, and Antonin Artaud.

He returned to Cuba and taught music at the
university. In 1943, he made a crucial trip to
Haiti, during which he attended a voodoo ceremony
that was to be very influential on his style of
writing.

Widely known for his baroque style of writing and
his theory of "lo real maravilloso," his most
famous works include Ecue-yambo-o! ("Praised Be
the Lord!", 1933), The Lost Steps (1953), and The
Kingdom of this World (1957). It was in the
prologue to The Kingdom, a novel of the Haitian
Revolution, that he described his vision of "lo
real maravilloso" or the marvelous real, which
some critics interpret as being synonymous with
magical realism.

From 1945 to 1959, he lived in Venezuela, which is
the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South
American country in which much of The Lost Steps
is set.

He returned to Cuba after the revolution in 1959
and served as Cuban ambassador to France. He
received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and the
French Prix Medici in 1979.

He died in Paris.