[In the following assessment of The War of Time, Good-sell finds Carpentier's tales inferior to his novels, but considers them significant for the light they shed on Carpentier's craft.]

Coming through Cuba's curtain of suspicion, the writings of Alejo Carpentier are like a warm sun as it penetrates the mist and clears the atmosphere. For Carpentier, a Havanaborn Cuban of French and Russian parentage, is one of the most versatile authors on the Latin American scene today. He is thoroughly Cuban, but his themes are wide-ranging, frequently universal, and generally quite imaginative. War of Time is a smallish collection of stories—three first published in Spanish in 1963 and two first published in French in 1967. They open up still more insights into the thought of this distinguished Cuban novelist and storyteller.

The collection's most important story, "The Highroad of Saint James," appears first in the volume and chronicles the fortunes of a 16th-century drummer boy named Juan who, in serious illness vows to make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the shrine of St. James, where he recovers. But his religious fervor quickly wanes and he returns to his worldly life, heading to the New World in search of gold and glory only to encounter poverty and unhappiness. Once again in Spain, "Juan the West Indian" and "Juan the Pilgrim" confront one another—and this time, in a scene that is ever so Spanish, yet so universal, the two set off together for the New World.

There is much of "Pilgrim's Progress" in the Carpentier story and yet is uniquely his own. Carpentier's message has its political thrust for those looking for it: "Juan the Pilgrim" abandons his cloak and goes off with his alter ego to plunder the New World, leaving the reader to conjure up all sorts of images of future Spanish greed and political avarice. But one suspects Carpentier had an even more universal message in mind. The tale ends without a conclusion to the struggle between the high road and the low road, between Juan the good and Juan the bad. That struggle is universal, he is saying, and it still goes on.

"Right of Sanctuary" is Carpentier's second story—a piece so totally different from the first that it might have come from a different author. There is a twinkle of mirth in this tale of a minister in an overthrown South American government who takes asylum in the embassy of another nation. The minister ends up becoming that nation's ambassador to the government that overthrew him in the first place.

In another vein, "Journey Back to the Source" reverses time like a film running backward. Carpentier uses the demolition of an old mansion as the springboard for a backward journey through the life of a Spanish nobleman.

The narrator of "Like the Night" is the universal soldier about to depart for war. The story is a haunting allegory on this perennial theme.

And finally, in "The Chosen," Carpentier has five different Noahs in five different Arks setting out on the waters to preserve the future. They travel together in the flood, of course—but disperse as the waters lower.

War of Time is not the best place to begin a reading of Carpentier, although it amply demonstrates his versatility and range of interests. Carpentier's novels, particularly The Lost Steps issued in English in 1956 and Explosion in a Cathedral in 1963, probably make better starting points. But the five tales in this small book suggest some of the reasons Carpentier has frequently been recommended for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He would be a worthy recipient.