Augusto Roa Bastos Biography

Augusto Roa Bastos enjoyed a reputable career as a journalist, screenwriter, and professor. In his youth, both his mother and uncle exposed him to philosophical literature that would influence his writing. As a teenager, he enlisted in the Chaco War as a hospital orderly. There he witnessed the atrocities of combat and declared himself a pacifist. After the conflict, he became an outspoken dissenter of dictatorship and wrote several articles against two military governments. The results of his writings forced him to live in exile for 29 years. Although his displacement brought him much distress, his writings gained him a nine-month travel fellowship from the British Council. The fellowship allowed him the opportunity to develop program material about Latin America for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In addition, he acted as a journalist for a Paraguay newspaper. In the evening, he experimented with magical realism, a writing style that fictionalizes events by using metaphorical examples to describe actual settings. At the beginning of his career, the author penned several poems and numerous plays that he never published. However, years later, his publication of, ‘Hijo de hombre’ (Son of Man), earned him admiration and success. Even so, his book ‘Yo, el Supremo’ (I, the Supreme) is considered his masterpiece