Litsy

keithmalek

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

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keithmalek

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

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keithmalek

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

Suet624 What? Astonishing. 8mo

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.

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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.... 2y

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

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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! 2y

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! 2y

Catsandbooks Sounds like a tough read. Good luck! 2y

Dilara @Catsandbooks Thanks! It's rewarding enough that I don't want to abandon it, but it is testing my willpower... 2y

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! 2y

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 🌎😊 2y

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! 2y

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