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. “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 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.