Chasse à l'homme — Roman noir sur la dictature cubaine (1956)

Authors : Alejo Carpentier

Genres : roman

Original language : espagnol

Editions

  • Editorial Cultura (La Havane), 1956 es
  • Gallimard, coll. La Croix du Sud, 1958 fr
  • Gallimard, coll. L'Étrangère, 1993 fr
  • Gallimard, coll. L'Imaginaire n°676, 2015 fr
    ISBN 9782070177660

Chasse à l’homme (El acoso, 1956)

Chasse à l’homme (El acoso) is the fourth novel by Alejo Carpentier, published in 1956. The plot is set in a Latin American dictionary country (undoubtedly Cuba) during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The novel follows the fate of a young dissident political woman who flees the capital after a failed revolutionary attempt. The ensuing hunt — that of the regime’s agents, the fear of the informant, the silent help of a few anonymous figures — constitutes a political thriller of rare intensity.

Carpentier uses an unusual narrative technique: the story focuses on the victim rather than on her executioners. The title itself — El acoso (The Hunt, The Chase) — suggests that the true enemy is not a specific individual but an institutionalized terror system. The novel was published in Cuba in 1956, on the eve of the Cuban revolution (December 1956), and then reissued in France as early as 1958.

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