In his essay "The Baroque and the Marvelous Real", Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier defined the baroque by a lack of emptiness, a departure from structure or rules, and an "extraordinary" abundance (plenitude) of disorienting detail (citing Mondrian as its opposite). From this angle, Carpentier views the baroque as a layering of elements, which translates easily into the post-colonial or transcultural Latin American atmosphere that he emphasizes in The Kingdom of this World.[16] "America, a continent of symbiosis, mutations... mestizaje, engenders the baroque,"[17] made explicit by elaborate Aztec temples and associative Nahuatl poetry. These mixing ethnicities grow together with the American baroque; the space in between is where the "marvelous real" is seen. Marvelous: not meaning beautiful and pleasant, but extraordinary, strange, and excellent. Such a complex system of layering—encompassed in the Latin American "boom" novel, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude—aims towards "translating the scope of America".[18]