Augusto Roa Bastos has created in his many short stories and two novels a monumental, complex, interrelated, and vast world. With a rich, experimental language he rewrites the history of his native land, Paraguay. While Roa's description of the violence, injustice, and repression of the colonial society of Latin America has many antecedents, his interweaving of European and Guaraní myths, the native culture of Paraguay, a depth and openness of analysis, and the diversity of his literary craft have assured him a position among the best writers of Latin America.

Roa was born in Asunción, but grew up in Iturbe, a provincial village where his father worked as a clerk on a sugar plantation. At his family's house the young Roa learned Guaraní and heard traditional stories from an old woman who lived with the family. When he was eight years old, he was...