Augusto Roa Bastos

Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2005), Paraguayan author, regarded as one of Latin America’s greatest narrative writers.

As a teenager Roa Bastos volunteered as a medical worker during the last years of the Chaco War (1932-1935) between Paraguay and Bolivia. In 1947 he left Paraguay due to government repression and settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There he wrote the better part of his work, including Hijo de Hombre (Son of Man, 1960), a book of stories; El Baldío (1966), about the social problems of his native country; and I, the Supreme (1986), a novel based on the life of 19th-century Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia.

Roa Bastos left Argentina in 1976 after a military dictatorship took control of the government there. He moved to France and taught literature at the University of Toulouse. In 1989 Roa Bastos was awarded the Cervantes Prize for literature in Spanish (See also Latin American Literature).