Explosion in a Cathedral (Spanish title: El Siglo de las Luces, "The Age of Enlightenment" ) is a historical novel by Cuban writer and musicologist Alejo Carpentier.

The book follows the story of three privileged Creole orphans from Havana, as they meet French adventurer Victor Hugues and get involved in the revolutionary turmoil that shook the Atlantic World at the end of the eighteenth century.

Regarded as one of Latin America's greatest historical novels, Explosion in a Cathedral deals with the impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean.

[1] The main characters are all members of one family: two siblings, Carlos and Sofia, and their cousin Esteban.

[3] Stylistically, it contains elements of existentialism[4] and magical realism,[5] and it mirrors the tension between Europe and Latin America found in many of Carpentier's other works.