I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

Overview

I the Supreme imagines a dialogue between the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator known as Dr. Francia and Policarpo Patiño, his secretary and only companion. The opening pages present a sign that they had found nailed to the wall of a cathedral, purportedly written by Dr. Francia himself and ordering the execution of all of his servants upon his death. This sign is quickly revealed to be a forgery, which takes leader and secretary into a larger discussion about the nature of truth: “In the light of what Your Eminence says, even the truth appears to be a lie.”

Their conversation broadens into an epic journey of the mind, stretching across the colonial history of their nation, filled with surrealist imagery, labyrinthine turns, and footnotes supplied by a mysterious “compiler.” A towering achievement from a foundational author of modern Latin American literature, I the Supreme is a darkly comic, deeply moving meditation on power and its abuse—and on the role of language in making and unmaking whole worlds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984898142
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Augusto Roa Bastos was born in 1917 and is widely considered to be one of Paraguay’s greatest novelists. Best known for his novels I the Supreme and Son of Man, he authored many works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and Spain’s Cervantes Prize, Roa Bastos spent much of his life outside Paraguay, both as a foreign correspondent and in exile for his opposition to the ruling governments of his country. He died in 2005.

Editorial Reviews

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.
—New York Times Book Review

Carlos Fuentes

An elaborate and erudite opus saturated in the verbal bravura of classic modernism.
—New Yorker

John Updike

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

Ronald Christ

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 Cortázar'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

Paul West

A richly textured, brilliant book. . . . One of the milestones of the Latin American novel.” —Carlos Fuentes, The New York Times Book Review

“A work of graceful, voluminous genius, an Everest of fiction. . . . Augusto Roa Bastos is himself a supreme find, maybe the most complex and brilliant Latin American novelist of all.” —The Washington Post

“A text of a verbal density that recalls the later James Joyce. . . . Roa Bastos’s novel has challenged and fascinated thousands of readers around the world.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“The most magnificent work, most magnificently translated, to come from Spanish into English in almost a quarter of a century.” —Commonweal

“These passages reverberate with a fierce surrealism—peopled with dwarves, women warriors and clairvoyant animals; studded with Borgesian images. . . A prodigious meditation not only on history and power, but also on the nature of language itself.” —The New York Times

“An elaborate and erudite opus saturated in the verbal bravura of classic modernism.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

“[I the Supreme’s] breadth of vision and ambition make it important in any language.” —The New Statesman

“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

From the Publisher