Editing Alejo Carpentier (section)

===''Lo real maravilloso''===
Carpentier is widely known for his theory of ''lo real maravilloso''. This is the notion that the history and the geography of Latin America are both so extreme as to appear fictional or even magical to outsiders. Thus, Latin America is a region where the line between magic and reality is blurred. It was in the prologue to ''The Kingdom of this World'', a novel of the [[Haitian Revolution]], that he described his vision of ''lo real maravilloso'': "But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?"<ref>{{Harvnb|Gosser Esquilín|1997|}}</ref> The novel itself develops the outlandish (but true) history of [[Henri Christophe]], first king of Haiti, as an example of how the real history of Latin America is so strange as to appear fictional. Some critics interpret the ''real maravilloso'' as being synonymous with [[magical realism]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Carpentier|2004|}}</ref> However, Carpentier's theory and its development in his work are more limited in their scope than is the magical realism of, for example, Gabriel García Márquez. Whereas García Márquez's works include events that the reader never mistakes for reality (rainfall of flowers, old men with wings, etc.), Carpentier, for the most part, simply writes about extreme aspects of the history and geography of Latin America, aspects that are almost unbelievable, but that are in fact true.<ref>{{Harvnb|Carpentier|2004|p=12}}</ref>