Augustos Roa Resfr Bastos Book order (chronological)

Augusto Roa Bastos stands as one of the most significant Latin American writers of the 20th century, a Paraguayan novelist and short story writer whose work grapples profoundly with his nation's social and historical landscape. Shaped by experiences with dictatorships and exile, his writing is celebrated for its intricate exploration of power, identity, and freedom. Roa Bastos masterfully weaves together myth, indigenous Guaraní language, and Baroque literary traditions, employing a distinctive style of magic realism. His narratives blend the past and present, drawing on pre-colonial myths and Christian legends to create a unique and compelling literary vision.

I the Supreme
433 pages
16 hours of reading
Latin America has seen, time and again, the rise of dictators, Supreme Leaders possessed of the dream of absolute power, who sought to impose their mad visions of Perfect Order on their own peoples. Latin American writers, in turn, have responded with fictional portraits of such figures, and no novel of this genre is as universally esteemed as Augusto Roa Bastos's I the Supreme, a book that draws on and reimagines the career of the man who was "elected" Supreme Dictator for Life in Paraguay in 1814.By turns grotesque, comic, and strangely moving, I the Supreme is a profound meditation on the uses and abuses of power—over men, over events, over language itself.
2019
4.1

I the Supreme