I the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos

I the Supreme
Augusto Roa Bastos
Translator: Helen Lane

Dalkey Archive
ISBN :1-56478-247-6
Paperback 433 Pages
Price:$13.95

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.

Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2005) is considered one of Parguay's greatest novelists. He is best known for his novel I the Supreme, but he wrotes many books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He spent much of his life outside of his home country, both as a foreign correspondent and in exile for his opposition to the ruling governments of his country.
Helen Lane was the preeminent translator of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian fiction. Among the long list of authors she translated are Augusto Roa Bastos, Jorge Amado, Luisa Valenzuela, Mario Vargas Llosa, Marguerite Duras, Nélinda Piñon, and Curzio Malaparte.