Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Originally published in Argentina in 1974, Yo el Supremo was arguably until the appearance of this volume the most important work of Latin American fiction awaiting translation into English. Now Helen Lane has made this rich and complex work available in an excellent translation, thus filling out our picture of the extraordinary range of achievement in Latin American literature. (This is surely the greatest work of fiction ever to come out of Paraguay.) I have one complaint—the decision to translate the novel's title literally may have been a mistake. 'Yo el Supremo' sounds perfectly idiomatic in Spanish, but 'I the Supreme' sounds awkward to English ears, and, besides, might lead the unwary reader to expect this to be the autobiography of Diana Ross. But despite the unfortunate English title, this book is worthy to stand beside such by now accepted classics of Latin American fiction as García Marquez' The Autumn of the Patriarch or Carpentier's Reasons of State. The dictator has been the curse of Latin American political life, but as Roa Bastos proves with his story of Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia—'elected' Supreme Dictator for Life in Paraguay in 1814—the distinctive Latin American form of tyranny makes a fascinating subject for fiction." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"The most magnificent work, most magnificently translated, to come from Spanish into English in almost a quarter of a century . . . Sort of a political As I Lay Dying by way of Tristram Shandy. Every textual fold is pleated by sumptuous wordplay; arcane, absurd, and (mostly) accurate annotation and quotation; as well as fact so much stranger than fiction that nobody knows what evil lurks in the mind of what possible man." Commonweal
Review
" I the Supreme was first published in Spanish in 1974. It is a shame that we have had to wait for so long for its publication in English, for its breadth of vision and ambition make it important in any language." New Statesman
Review
"Now that a superb English translation of this dauntingly complex work is at last available, readers in this country will be in a position to see for themselves why Latin American critics have been moved to invoke the names of Joyce and Musil, Cervantes and Rabelais to describe the breadth and ambition of I the Supreme." New Republican
Review
"The novel's true achievement is one of tone and voice. The language is a triumph almost as much for the translator as for the Author - ebulliently resourceful, brilliant in its vitriol and vituperation, rabelaisian in its extravagance." Publishers Weekly
Review
"These passages reverberate with a fierce surrealism--peopled with dwarves, women warriors and clairvoyant animals; studded with Borgesian images of mirrors and labyrinths, mystical eggs and blankets made of batskin, and embroidered with subsidiary tales about madness, death, and humiliation . . . A prodigious meditation not only on history and power, but also on the nature of language itself." The New York Times
Review
"A text of a verbal density that recalls the later James Joyce, a web of intertextual reference never seen in modern Spanish outside of Borges, Roa Bastos' novel has challenged and fascinated thousands of readers around the world . . . A highly serious yet comic novel." The Los Angeles Times
Review
"Augusto Roa Bastos is himself a supreme find, maybe the most complex and brilliant Latin American novelist of all . . . What a glory of echoing voices this Paraguayan portmanteau is, more Joycean than Cortazar's Hopscotch, every bit as volcanic and visionary as Lezama Lima's Paradiso or Osman Lins's Avalovara . . . I the Supreme is a work of graceful, voluminous genius, an Everest of fiction." Washington Post Book World
Review
"A richly textured, brilliant book--an impressive portrait, not only of El Supremo, but of a whole colonial society in the throes of learning how to swim, or how best to drown, in the seas of national independence . . . I the Supreme is one of the milestones of the Latin American novel." The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
"An elaborate and erudite opus saturated in the verbal bravura of classic modernism."--The New Yorker
About the Author
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.