The Chase

Name: The Chase
ISBN: 9787020191710

阿莱霍·卡彭铁尔People's Literature Publishing House2025

4.6

Chapters: 5
Series: Alejo Carpentier Works
ISBN: 9787020191710

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Summary

The Chase (Spanish original El acoso) is a novella by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, published in 1956 and his first urban work set in 20th-century Havana. Drawn from a real event in Cuban history, it alternates between two unnamed figures: a fugitive hunted for betraying a revolutionary organization, desperately hiding in the city, and a concert-hall ticket seller with musical aspirations, waiting in his daily life for a long-anticipated symphony concert. The cornered fugitive finally takes refuge in a concert hall where Beethoven's Eroica Symphony happens to be playing; as the music advances, his flight reaches its end. The novel deliberately models its structure on sonata form: the first chapter corresponds to the exposition, the second to the development and contains thirteen variations, and the third to the recapitulation; the narrative person also shifts with the characters—third person for the ticket seller, first person for the fugitive. Carpentier fuses politics, music, history, and Havana's architectural details, turning a chase story into an intricate experiment about time, fear, and artistic form. The writer Cabrera Infante called it "an almost perfect Spanish novel," and Harold Bloom also spoke highly of Carpentier's place in Latin American literature.

Editor's review

一本很适合用“四十三分钟”来度量的书。卡彭铁尔让一个被追杀的叛徒钻进音乐厅，恰好赶上贝多芬《英雄交响曲》奏响，于是逃亡的时间与音乐的时间被死死焊在一起，读者在翻页时会不断意识到：音乐的每一段进行，都对应着主人公生命的倒数。这种写法今天听来仍不陈旧，因为它是把形式本身当成情节来使用，而不是当成装饰。卡彭铁尔兼通音乐与建筑，他在小说里写哈瓦那的立柱、回廊和光影，笔触像测绘一样精确，读到后段那种层层收紧的压迫感，很大程度上来自这些“看得见”的空间描写。2025年陈皓的新译本收入“卡彭铁尔作品集”，并附有导读性质的代序与代译后记，能帮助第一次接触“神奇现实主义”的读者找到入口。篇幅不长，半天可以读完，但值得读第二遍。

Who it's for

A good fit for

喜欢拉美文学、想从短篇入手了解“文学爆炸”源头的读者
对小说结构与叙事形式实验感兴趣的写作者与文学研究者
古典音乐爱好者，尤其熟悉贝多芬《英雄交响曲》的人
时间有限、希望用一两小时读完一部经典中篇的读者

Not a good fit for

期待情节连贯、人物丰满的传统悬疑或追捕故事的读者
不熟悉现代主义叙事、对跳跃人称与结构实验缺乏耐心的初读者

Reading tips

先读代序了解卡彭铁尔的“神奇现实”主张，再进入正文，会更容易接受书中的叙述切换。
阅读时留意三章与奏鸣曲式（呈示部、展开部、再现部）的对应关系，把它当作理解结构的线索。
可以在听《英雄交响曲》的同时读第二、三章，体会文本节奏与音乐的同步感。
读完后看代译后记，再回头重读第一章，很多伏笔与空间细节会重新显形。

About the publisher

People's Literature Publishing House China · Founded in 1951

People's Literature Publishing House publishes across classical literature, foreign literature, documentary writing and folk literature, with 492 titles in its catalogue. Representative books range from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms to Lao She's Teahouse and Longxu Ditch in the Selected Works of Lao She, as well as translated foreign literature such as Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Dante's Divine Comedy and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, alongside documentary and fictional works including Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and João Guimarães Rosa's The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. Its authors include Chinese writers such as Lao She, translators such as Shen Emeri and Li Wenjun, and foreign authors such as James Wood. Overall, the house has a strong record in editing classic works and translating foreign literature, with a publishing character that bridges Chinese and foreign writing and values textual quality.

The Master of Masters: Carpentier (Preface)
I
II
III
The Antiheroic Theme and Structural Sublimity (Translator's Afterword)

FAQ

《追击》讲的是真实事件吗？

小说取材于古巴历史上的真实事件，原型被认为是古巴前ABC组织领导人何塞·索雷尔。但卡彭铁尔做了大量文学化处理，人物在书中没有名字，因此不宜当成纪实作品来读。

这本书和贝多芬《英雄交响曲》有什么关系？

小说结构刻意对应奏鸣曲式，三章分别相当于呈示部、展开部和再现部，第二章含十三个变奏；故事高潮也发生在音乐厅演奏该曲的过程之中。

2025年人民文学出版社版和旧版有什么不同？

2025年4月版由陈皓翻译，收入“卡彭铁尔作品集”，精装，附代序与代译后记。此前的中央编译出版社2004年版由晓林翻译，除《追击》外还收录《时间之战》等短篇。

需要先读卡彭铁尔其他作品吗？

不需要。《追击》篇幅短、结构自足，是了解卡彭铁尔与拉美“神奇现实”的常见入门作，可直接从这一本开始，再延伸到《人间王国》《光明世纪》。

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About the author

阿莱霍·卡彭铁尔 Author

Alejo Carpentier is an author of significant standing in the history of Latin American literature. The library currently holds only one of his works, The Chase (a Carpentier collection), and publicly available information is limited, making it difficult to describe the details of his life in depth. Judging from the category of this work, he is usually classified under foreign literature, and his writing is often regarded as one of the precursors of Latin American magical realism, skillfully interweaving real politics and historical memory with a surreal atmosphere, while his language pays attention to musicality and rhythm. Carpentier's works have been translated and introduced in the Chinese-speaking world, offering reference value for understanding the narrative experiments and regional imagination of twentieth-century Latin American fiction. Readers may use The Chase as an initial contact with his style and feel his distinctive pursuit in structural arrangement and atmosphere building.