I the Supreme imagines a dialogue between the 19th 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 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 meditation on power and its abuse—and on the role of language through the author’s own verbal invention.
“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.” —LA Times
“Passages reverberate with surrealism—peopled with dwarves, women warriors and clairvoyant animals… However cumbersome and rhetorical I the Supreme may often feel, the novel remains a prodigious meditation not only on history and power, but also on the nature of language itself.” —The NY Times
(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)
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