Reviews

I, the Supreme by Helen Lane, Augusto Roa Bastos

warrenl's review against another edition

I cannot rate this book. I swung like a pendulum between thinking it the best novel I've ever read, and by far the worst. Certainly the most difficult and dense, but equally the most rewarding. I'm very pleased I did read it; I was also relieved when it was over. Some parts seared themselves into my brain, others I skimmed uncomprehendingly. But by the end of it I felt that I had come to know the extraordinary, mercurial El Supremo, and I glimmered with a tiny understanding of Paraguay. These have to be worth something...

lucyscandalo's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

hanntastic's review against another edition

Global Read 145: Paraguay

I couldn't really get into this book, but I totally am willing to say that's me, not the book. It was really dense- one of the blurbs compared it to Ulysses, and it was hard to stay focused. Many individual paragraphs or sections were so clever and interesting that I enjoyed reading them, but overall I struggled to stay engaged.

sharon333's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging book I've ever read. Besides reading it in Spanish, I don't know enough of the history to know what was factual and what was fabricated, and of the many names mentioned I couldn't always verify who was historical. I'm glad I read it, partly because I lived in Paraguay for a couple years and wanted to understand their beloved author a little more, but I'm very glad I'm finally done with it. 

dilara86's review

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

joti's review against another edition

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No

1.0

This really wasn't a book for me. At first, I thought the writing style was quite unique in a potentially good way. There's a dialogue but no dialogue markers, making it hard to know who says what (which is partially the point, I believe, mixing the sense of identity and the importance of writing and words, etc). There are some nice alliterations and wordplay which I think must have been very challenging and rewarding for a translator to work on. 
Overall I'm just really confused. There's no clear line, I'm not sure which pieces are part of the 'main' story, which elements are historical or just fake or... At times it's very alienating, with descriptions of all sorts of bugs and something about eyeballs being cut out (?) 
I wonder if it would have been clearer to me if I had more historical background but I really found this incredibly hard to read and wouldn't have finished if it wasn't for a reading challenge. 

nathan_niehaus's review against another edition

4.0

mind-bending verbiage unrelentingly poured forth from the labyrinthine mind of an obsessed dictator, who has read literally everything you could find in an early 19th century Western library. Can be hard to get through at times, especially the long stretches of banal administrative affairs, conflicts over international trade and treaties, juntas, instructions, dispatches. The best pages are top-notch, lucid, hallucinatory, sometimes moving, sometimes piercing, mystical, awesome, awe-inspiring. Baroque with a postmodern twist. Infinite inventiveness, puns, wordplay, neologisms, allusions, citations. Some of the more surreal imagery would fit in a Salvador Dali painting. The last 50 pages are a tour-de-force (not including the appendix, but including the Final Compiler's Notes).

beerqueer91's review

challenging dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

aylart's review against another edition

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This seems to me like a book to study, rather than one to read. To me at least, this was very difficult to get through and, ultimately, made me feel a bit dumb for not "getting" it. It is undoubtedly creative, but, to me, unreadable. 

elenasquareeyes's review against another edition

2.0

Translated by Helen Lane. 

I feel like I should preface this review by saying that anything I say about this book is what I think was happening and I have no concrete idea if that was the case as I was often left confused by everything that was in this novel. 

I found I, the Supreme really hard to read due to how it was written. There aren’t any speech marks when characters are talking, there’s long paragraphs, and it often it read like a stream of consciousness as characters seem to go on so many tangents. Obviously, I concentrate/pay attention whenever I read a book but with I, the Supreme I felt I had to put so much more effort in to follow what was happening and still I ended up lost a lot of times. The lack of speech marks was especially difficult as characters appeared to have conversations in the same paragraph. This may be because it’s a story that started off as two characters discussing things so a character recounts what someone else said in their own dialogue. Whatever the reason, it still made it hard to read. 

I, the Supreme appeared to follow the life of El Supremo but not in a linear order. It would jump around and it would take time and many pages later to realise the connections between certain events or people mentioned. There were a lot of footnotes in the book which were helpful in providing true historical context for the events the book was depicting or bending slightly. In the latter half of the book there was almost footnotes or asides in the main body of the text, giving context in a way that you couldn’t avoid – perhaps to show how important that information was to understand the fictionalised account. 

There were sections that seemed far removed from the life of El Supremo or seemed to be a fantastical take on things. For instance, in multiple chapters there are sections that focus on a talking skull which I think is supposed to be El Supremo’s talking skull but I’m really not sure. 

Naturally a dictator does abhorrent things and the way they were depicted had a wry or dark sense of humour to them sometimes which again made them difficult to read about. I, the Supreme also depicted El Supremo as a dangerous child who’d have temper tantrums and suddenly change their mind about people or situations to deadly results. Maybe that’s what dictators are though? Impulsive people with too much power and people who are too afraid to say no. 

Unlike other historical novels I’ve read during my Read the World Project I don’t think I learnt too much about Paraguay in the 1800s because I didn’t understand a lot of I, the Supreme. I don’t mind a non-linear narrative but I think the way I, the Supreme is written with its lack of speech marks and jumping to different times, places, and characters points of views without being clear about when, where and who we’re now with made it very difficult to read. In the end I don’t think I took much of this story in at all.