I THE SUPREME (First Edition)

NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. First edition. First printing. Hardcover. Fine in a fine jacket. Neat OK stamp bottom edges. A tight unread copy. Translated by Helen lane. A historical novel written by exiled Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos, it is a fictionalized account of the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who was also known as "Dr. Francia". The book's title derives from the fact that Francia referred to himself as "El Supremo" or "the Supreme". The first in a long line of dictators, the Supreme was a severe, calculating despot. Considered Roa Bastos's masterpiece and one of the great Latin American novels of the 20th century. Winner of the Premio Cervantes (1989), the most prestigious literary honor in the Spanish-speaking world. In 1986 Carlos Fuentes, for The New York Times, wrote of Roa Bastos: "He is his country's most eminent writer; his works are few, self-contained (very Paraguayan) and brilliantly written. Yet his masterpiece, I, the Supreme, which first came out in Spanish in 1974 and finally reaches the English-reading public now, in a masterly translation by Helen Lane.". …