Spanish Yo el Supremo) is a historical novel written by exiled Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos.

"[2] Yet this assertion is constantly challenged by the very fact that while he achieves power by means of writing and dictating, these very same methods can be used by others to dispute his authority.

Many consider the book to be at least in part a thinly disguised attack on Stroessner who used methods similar to Francia's to achieve and maintain the effective control of the country, including the swift elimination of opposition, the employment of torture and intolerance of dissent.

In its portrayal of Francia and criticism of Stroessner, I the Supreme belongs to the genre of novelas de dictadores or dictator novels, and also to the Latin American Boom, a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Martin goes on to suggest that it was "more immediately and unanimously acclaimed than any novel since One Hundred Years of Solitude, [and its] strictly historical importance [may] be even greater than that of García Márquez's fabulously successful creation.

"[8] In the twentieth-century, Paraguay was dominated by the dictatorial figure of Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled the country for thirty-five years (from 1954 to 1989) and was in power at the time at which Roa Bastos was writing I the Supreme.

Roa Bastos's novel can be perceived as in part a thinly disguised attack on Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay even longer than Francia.

He gained complete control of the military, eliminated potential rivals, and closely monitored and participated in allocations of national resources.

As Deiner argues, "The novel’s El Supremo (Francia) and Stroessner in the twentieth century used similar methods for dominating national politics.

"[10] Literary critic Todd Garth argues that I the Supreme is influenced by twentieth-century Argentine writer Macedonio Fernández, as well as other avant garde artists such as Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.

Macedonio's writing utilized characters that did not fit the archetype of Western fiction, each only having meaning through their interaction with others in a collective and often never experiencing growth or development in order to construct atemporal spaces of mythmaking that challenge reality.

Roa Bastos borrows from these ideas yet situates them in existing political and social history to challenge perceived conceptions of the past's factuality.

[16] The dictator novel draws upon the relationship between power, writing, and dictatorship,[17] and so is an allegory of the role of the Latin American writer in society.

[18] To be considered a dictator novel, a book must have strong political themes that draw upon historical accounts, while critically examining the power held by an authoritarian figure, allowing the specific to explain the general.

"[21] Other notable characteristics of the Boom include the treatment of both "rural and urban settings," internationalism, an emphasis on both the historical and the political, as well as "questioning of regional as well as, or more than, national identity; awareness of hemisphereic as well as worldwide economic and ideological issues; polemicism; and timeliness.

It incorporates the latest developments in linguistic theory and practice, talks of the arbitrariness and unreliability of language that purports to describe reality, rereads and comments upon the various histories and travelers’ accounts of Paraguay, ranges across the breadth of Latin American history, implicitly condemning Stroessner and debating with Fidel Castro, and exploring once again the gap between writer and reader.

The Supreme and his secretary discuss an often bizarre series of topics: a meteor that is apparently chained to Francia's desk; a prison camp in Tevego whose inhabitants have been turned to stone; and increasingly the dictator also ruminates on the past, particularly the events of Paraguay's foundation when he had to fend off the attention of Spaniards, Argentines, and Brazilians, all of whom threatened the nascent country's independence.

Chronology and logic are seemingly abandoned: at one point the dictator discusses the date of his own death;[28] elsewhere he mentions events that will only happen long afterwards, such as the Chaco War of the 1930s (in which Roa Bastos himself fought).

The final line is another interpolation: "(the remainder stuck together, illegible, the rest unable to be found, the worm-eaten letters of the Book hopelessly scattered).

Michiko Kakutani writes "Francia, it seems, wants to account for everything (his own history, as well as the history of his nation, which he personifies as its leader) as he pours out his story, it becomes clear that he possesses an insatiable desire for power and control—he has even chained a huge meteorite to his desk, as punishment for being a cosmic runaway—and that he also sees himself as two separate beings: as a conniving, paranoiac "I", beset by the average ego's fears and doubts, and as the "Supreme", a monstrously powerful presence that even Francia himself must refer to in the third person.

An "efficient and loyal servant", in historian Hoyt Williams's words, he was "a jack of all trades, [who] arranged audiences, transcribed documents, visited the jails, and conferred with the Dictator on most routine matters.

Initially possessing a more powerful role, the Supreme's "personal control over virtually the entirety of [the state]" led to Patiño quickly being demoted from "Government Secretary and scribe" to simply a record keeper.

González Echevarria argues that "Dr. Francia's fear of the pasquinade, his abuse of [Patiño,] his constant worry about writing all stem from the fact that he has found and used the power implicit in language itself.

[43] As Deiner argues, "El Supremo is aware of the difficulties of incorporating rural and underclass Paraguayans into the national political system, even though he is sympathetic toward them.

"[44] The novel's format, its various multiple sources, its manipulation of linear time and its inclusion of supernatural elements (talking dogs and meteor rifles, for example) all serve to deconstruct the idea of absolute power, by creating an ambiguity between fact and myth, between Dr Francia and the Supreme, and between Roa Bastos and the Compiler.

"[47] In summary, Deiner suggest that the novel "serves as the quintessential example of the personalist dictator model of Latin American political systems.

"[5] Outside Paraguay, Roa Bastos's works never became best-sellers like those of other members of the Boom such as Gabriel García Márquez or Mario Vargas Llosa, yet as a recognition of his literary prestige he was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1989.

'"[49] Michiko Kakutani, writing for The New York Times, also remarked in that year that "however cumbersome and rhetorical I The Supreme may often feel, the novel remains a prodigious meditation not only on history and power, but on the nature of language itself.

"[33] Also in 1986 Carlos Fuentes, for The New York Times, wrote of Roa Bastos: "He is his country's most eminent writer; his works are few, self-contained (very Paraguayan) and brilliantly written.

Yet his masterpiece, I the Supreme, which first came out in Spanish in 1974 and finally reaches the English-reading public now, in a masterly translation by Helen Lane, is the kind of summa that absorbs everything that the writer has done before.