Litsy

keithmalek

The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy | Daniel Kalder

1 like

keithmalek

How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century | Frank Dik�tter

1 like

keithmalek

The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy | Daniel Kalder

Suet624 What? Astonishing. 7mo

6 likes1 comment

keithmalek

The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy | Daniel Kalder

5 likes

keithmalek

The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy | Daniel Kalder

(Continued)...With all this power and unique knowledge, the dictator of even a small and geopolitically insignificant country should thus be in a position to write at least a moderately interesting book, even if by accident.

5 likes

keithmalek

The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy | Daniel Kalder

5 likes

Dilara

I the Supreme | Augusto Roa Bastos

Done! I've just finished this novel. Time for something that's more to my taste 😁

#FoodandLit
@Catsandbooks @Texreader

Picture of the Fine Arts museum of Paraguay from Wikipedia

Liz_M Uh oh this does not bode well for my reading plans.... 1y

Catsandbooks Glad you got through it! 🙌🏼 1y

Dilara @Liz_M You never know! You might feel completely differently than me about this novel 😁 I found it hard to engage with, both on an intellectual and emotional level, but YMMV. It would have been easier if I'd had a better grasp of the “national narrative“. I suspect there were a lot of inside jokes etc. that I didn't get but would give Paraguayan readers a good chuckle. And if you enjoyed the 1st 20 pages, you should be fine with the other 400 👍 1y

34 likes1 stack add3 comments

Liz_M

I the Supreme | Augusto Roa Bastos

I've finished Three Lives and Baba Yaga. And then started I the Supreme. Doctor Thorne and Clarissa continue....

Dilara I'm curious to know what you think of I the Supreme! 1y

27 likes1 comment

Dilara

I the Supreme | Augusto Roa Bastos

This is a bit of a slog and I had to extend my library loan. The ideal reader would be someone with a deep and wide knowledge of #Paraguayan culture and history, who knows Spanish, Guarani and Portuguese, enjoys puns and erudite jokes, and is reasonably well-versed in Enlightenment philosophy and 18-century history.

#FoodandLit
@Catsandbooks @Texreader

Picture of the Supreme - a grumpy-looking José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia - from Wikipedia

Bookwomble It sounds like that person is most likely to be Augusto Roa Bastos! 1y

Catsandbooks Sounds like a tough read. Good luck! 1y

Dilara @Catsandbooks Thanks! It's rewarding enough that I don't want to abandon it, but it is testing my willpower... 1y

Dilara @Bookwomble Yes 😆 😁. The fact that Latin America was almost completely absent from my school curriculum growing up (in France, but it probably was pretty much the same in the rest of Europe - I hope it was different in North America) doesn't help. Thank heaven for Wikipedia! 1y

Bookwomble @Dilara I grew up (to a degree!) in Britain, and was taught nothing about South America. Thank goodness we have books to fill in these blanks in our cultural maps 🌎😊 1y

34 likes5 comments

Dilara

I the Supreme | Helen R. Lane, Augusto Antonio Roa Bastos

I was able to borrow this #Paraguayan classic hidden in the stacks. There was a pristine library bookmark hidden in it. The number of digits in the phone number provided on the verso dates it to the nineties 😲
I'm about a third of the way through: the writing's a bit over the top, which gets tiring after a while, so I'm reading it in small installments.

#FoodandLit
@Catsandbooks @Texreader

Dilara It is written in the voice of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, a 19th-century dictator of Paraguay. Wikipedia tells me he was inspired by the Enlightenment and Rousseau. That is very intriguing. Also, he forbade white Paraguayans from intermarrying - they had to marry black, mulatto, native American or mestizo people. This happened in the early 19th century and must have horrified the majority of white people further North! 1y

30 likes1 stack add1 comment

Welcome to Litsy!

Trending Hashtags

Trending Books