2005, ISBN: 9781230051093

Hardcover

New York. 1986. Knopf. 1st American Edition. Very Good In Slightly Worn Dustjacket. 438 pages. April 1986. hardcover. 0394535359. Jacket illustration and design by Bascove. Translated fro… More...

New York. 1986. Knopf. 1st American Edition. Very Good In Slightly Worn Dustjacket. 438 pages. April 1986. hardcover. 0394535359. Jacket illustration and design by Bascove. Translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane. (original title: Yo el supremo, 1974 - Siglo Veintiuno Editores, S.A., Buenos Aires). keywords: Literature Translated Paraguay Latin America. inventory # 29514. FROM THE PUBLISHER - 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’ I THE SUPREME, a book that draws on and re-imagines the career of the man who was ‘elected’ Supreme Dictator for Life in Paraguay in 1814. When we meet José Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia he is in his last days, after almost thirty years of absolute rule. Never married, having disavowed his own family and whatever friends he once had, he has as his only companion his longtime secretary, Policarpo Patiño. And it is to this much-abused (and possibly treacherous) servant that Francia pours out his deathbed ruminations: about his education at a monastery in Spain (and his expulsion therefrom), about his rivalries with his fellow ‘liberators’ Bolivar and San Martin and his uneasy alliances with his Argentine neighbors, about the many-ton meteorite he had chained to his desk as punishment for being a runaway deserter from the cosmos. Roa Bastos counterpoints this ongoing conversation between master and servant by using various devices that enhance (even as they complicate) our vision of Francia: extracts from Francia’s private notebook; a running commentary, the official version of the dictator’s acts and thoughts, from Patiño’s ‘perpetual circular’; and impeccably verifiable footnotes taken from more than 20,000 documents, supplied by an unidentified ‘compiler.’ The effect of these shifting, contradictory perspectives is to reveal two Francias, one the intriguingly cunning, minor-league Machiavellian ‘I,’ and the other the eerily powerful ‘Supreme,’ an almost supernatural being that even Francia himself must refer to in the third person. 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. Brilliantly rendered by Helen Lane’s translation, it is a classic of world literature. Augusto Roa Bastos, (born Asunción, June 13, 1917 – died Asunción, April 26, 2005) is undoubtedly one of the greatest Paraguayan novelists of all time, and indeed among the most important Latin American writers. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia and worked as journalist and a film scriptwriter. He is best known for Yo el Supremo (1974, I, the Supreme). This is one of the foremost Latin American novels to tackle the question of dictators and dictatorships, in the person of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist and no little eccentricity for 26 years in the early 19th century. His other major work was Hijo de Hombre (1960, ‘Son of Man’). He also wrote numerous other novels and stories. Roa Bastos spent his childhood in Iturbe, a small town some 200 km to the south of the capital Asunción, where his father managed a sugar refinery. In 1932, with the outbreak of the Chaco War, he dropped out of school and joined the troops as a medical auxiliary; the horrors he experienced during this time set him firmly against violence for the rest of his life. After the war, his first jobs were as a bank clerk and reporter on the Asunción daily El País; around the same time, he began writing for the theater. During World War II he was invited to London by the British Council; he also served as El País’s war correspondent in London and covered the Nuremberg Trials for the paper. In 1947, because of his activities in opposition to President Higinio Morínigo during the Paraguayan Civil War, he was forced to flee the country. He settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he published most of his work. With the arrival of the military dictatorship in 1976, however, he left Argentina for France, where he taught Guaraní and Spanish literature at the University of Toulouse. Roa Bastos did not return to his native Paraguay until 1989, following the downfall of Alfredo Stroessner for whom he professed detestation. That same year, he was awarded the Premio Cervantes (Cervantes Prize), awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy and its correspondent academies in the various American nations, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the Spanish-language novel; he spent the prize money on educational and literary projects in Paraguay. (original title: Yo el supremo, 1974 - Siglo Veintiuno Editores, S.A., Buenos Aires). ISBN: 0394535359., RareBooksClub.com. Paperback. New. This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 114 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.2in.This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: . . . surface pits. The thin, dull-black crust has been broken off in s, ots, revealing the dark gray interior with minute metallic points scattered through it. This is the fall entered as West Liberty in the British Museum catalogue of meteorites. (Purchasedfrom II. T. Woodman. ) Mocz, Transylvania. A complete, wedge-shaped individual. The comparatively thick, dull-black crust is intersected by a network of line cracks. The interior is gray with small brown spots in it, and with numerous line veins and particles of iron scattered through it. (Spang Coll. ) Two smaller complete individuals presenting the same characters. (Spang Coll. ) With Plates III And IV, And Fikteen Fi;ires In Tiie Te. xt The rapid evolution of the Titanotheres (luring the deposition of about i8o feet of sediment in the Oligocene White River Beds is one of the striking chapters in mammalian history which is still only partly understood. The following study of the evolution of the cranium is chiefly an attempt to distinguish the influences of se. v, of age or ftwM, and of individual variation from the truly retrogressive and piogressive characters. It is written to this end, hut unfortunately we cannot intelligibly treat the morphology of Titanothei inm without first clearing out the Augean stable of nomenclature. The greater number of the thirteen generic and thirty-one specific terms which have been proposed are either undefined or (indefinable, or are based upon non-specific or non-generic characters. The materials examined in connection with this study are: Copes type skulls and jaws now in the American Museum collection; eighteen skulls mostly collected, partly purchased, for the Museum in the expeditions of 1892 and 1894 by Dr. Wortman and Mr. Peterson; the. . . This item ships from La Vergne,TN., RareBooksClub.com<

ISBN: 9781230051093

RareBooksClub. Paperback. New. This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 114 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.2in.This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Pur… More...

RareBooksClub. Paperback. New. This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 114 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.2in.This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: . . . surface pits. The thin, dull-black crust has been broken off in s, ots, revealing the dark gray interior with minute metallic points scattered through it. This is the fall entered as West Liberty in the British Museum catalogue of meteorites. (Purchasedfrom II. T. Woodman. ) Mocz, Transylvania. A complete, wedge-shaped individual. The comparatively thick, dull-black crust is intersected by a network of line cracks. The interior is gray with small brown spots in it, and with numerous line veins and particles of iron scattered through it. (Spang Coll. ) Two smaller complete individuals presenting the same characters. (Spang Coll. ) With Plates III And IV, And Fikteen Fi;ires In Tiie Te. xt The rapid evolution of the Titanotheres (luring the deposition of about i8o feet of sediment in the Oligocene White River Beds is one of the striking chapters in mammalian history which is still only partly understood. The following study of the evolution of the cranium is chiefly an attempt to distinguish the influences of se. v, of age or ftwM, and of individual variation from the truly retrogressive and piogressive characters. It is written to this end, hut unfortunately we cannot intelligibly treat the morphology of Titanothei inm without first clearing out the Augean stable of nomenclature. The greater number of the thirteen generic and thirty-one specific terms which have been proposed are either undefined or (indefinable, or are based upon non-specific or non-generic characters. The materials examined in connection with this study are: Copes type skulls and jaws now in the American Museum collection; eighteen skulls mostly collected, partly purchased, for the Museum in the expeditions of 1892 and 1894 by Dr. Wortman and Mr. Peterson; the. . . This item ships from La Vergne,TN., RareBooksClub<