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.
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