Miguel de Cervantes Prize
By far the highest figure of Cuban narrative literature in the 20th century was Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980). Novelist, essayist and musicologist, he greatly influenced the development of Latin American literature, particularly by his style of writing, which incorporates several dimensions of imagination—dreams, myths, magic and religion—in his concept of reality. He won a Miguel de Cervantes Prize, regarded as a sort of Spanish-language Nobel Prize in Literature, and was nominated for a Nobel Prize. José Lezama Lima and Guillermo Cabrera Infante were two other important Cuban novelists of universal stature.