Elliott Carter
American composer
Augusto Roa Bastoswas a Paraguayan novelist and short story writer. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia, and he later worked as a journalist, screenwriter and professor.
Table of Contents
About the Augusto Roa Bastos
Augusto Roa Bastoswas a Paraguayan novelist and short story writer. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia, and he later worked as a journalist, screenwriter and professor. He is best known for his complex novel Yo el Supremoand for winning the Premio Miguel de Cervantes in 1989, Spanish literature’s most prestigious prize. Yo el Supremo explores the dictations and inner thoughts of Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, the eccentric dictator of Paraguay who ruled with an iron fist, from 1814 until his death in 1840.
Roa Bastos’s life and writing were marked by experience with dictatorial military regimes. In 1947 he was forced into exile in Argentina, and in 1976 he fled Buenos Aires for France in similar political circumstances. Most of Roa Bastos’s work was written in exile, but this did not deter him from fiercely tackling Paraguayan social and historical issues in his work. Writing in a Spanish that was at times heavily augmented by Guarani wordsand El fiscal (1993; The Prosecutor), as well as numerous other novels, short stories, poems, and screenplays.
4 Quotes by Augusto Roa Bastos
- 1.
The things that have come into being change continually. The man with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing.
Augusto Roa BastosParaguayan writer
- 2.
Anyone who attempts to relate his life loses himself in the immediate. One can only speak of another.
Augusto Roa BastosParaguayan writer
- 3.
In all nations an exceptional man exists that compensates the deficiencies of the remainder. In those moments, when humanity is found collectively in a state of decadence, there always remain those exceptional beings as point of reference.
Augusto Roa BastosParaguayan writer
- 4.
What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what’s behind them.
Augusto Roa BastosParaguayan writer