Augusto Roa Bastos
Novelist and Writer · 1917–2005
Who is Augusto Roa Bastos?
Augusto Roa Bastos is widely regarded as Paraguay's greatest writer and one of the major voices of twentieth-century Latin American literature. Born in Asunción in 1917, he fought as a teenager in the Chaco War against Bolivia before turning to journalism, screenwriting, and teaching. Political persecution forced him into exile in Argentina in 1947, and a second wave of repression sent him from Buenos Aires to France in 1976; he spent most of his working life writing about Paraguay from abroad. His masterpiece, "Yo el Supremo" (1974), reimagines the mind of the 19th-century dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia in a dense, experimental narrative considered one of the great Spanish-language novels of the century. His earlier novel "Hijo de Hombre" (1960) likewise confronted Paraguay's cycles of violence, poverty, and authoritarian rule. In 1989 he received the Premio Miguel de Cervantes, the highest honor in Spanish-language letters, and donated much of the prize money to improving access to books in Paraguay. He also famously described his homeland as "una isla rodeada de tierra" — an island surrounded by land — capturing its historic isolation. He died in Asunción in 2005.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Augusto Roa Bastos" · Britannica, "Augusto Roa Bastos" · Instituto Cervantes, "Authors in search of a reader: Augusto Roa Bastos"