Description
Set in nineteenth-century Paraguay, this landmark historical novel stages a tense, shifting dialogue between the feared dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia—who styled himself “El Supremo”—and the men who record, question, and survive him. As Francia dictates his version of power, the book exposes how authority is manufactured through language, bureaucracy, and performance, even as those same words become tools for doubt and resistance. Blending fiction with documentary texture, it probes the psychology of rule, the fragility of truth, and the moral cost of absolute control. In the tradition of the Latin American Boom and the “novel of dictators,” Augusto Roa Bastos delivers a daring, lyrical, and intellectually charged portrait that resonates far beyond its historical setting.
Available Editions
paperback
Vintage
Published Feb 26, 2019
448 pages
ISBN: 9780525564690
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Details
First Published
1974
Language
spa
Translation
From: spa
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for I the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos.