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 Cuba. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. 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 that he described his vision of "lo real maravilloso" or the marvelous real, which some critics interpret as being synonmous with magical realism. Although he was Cuban, Carpentier spent much of his life in exhile, including a long and influential period in Paris in the 1920s. He later spent some time in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country that much of The Lost Steps is set in. Carpentier was an avowed leftist.

da:Alejo Carpentier es:Alejo Carpentier