The first great twentieth-century novel of dictatorship, and theavowed inspiration for Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of thePatriarch and Roa Bastos's I, the Supreme, Tyrant Banderasis a dark and dazzling portrayal of a mythical Latin AmericanRepublic in the grip of a monster. Valle-Inclan, one of themasters of Spanish modernism, combines the splintered pointsof view of a cubist painting with the campy excesses of 19thcenturyserial fiction to paint an astonishing picture of a ruthlesstyrant facing armed revolt.It is the Day of the Dead, and revolution has broken out, creatingmayhem from Baby Roach's Cathouse to the Harris Circusto the deep jungle of Tico Maipo. The tyrant steps forth,assuring all that he is in favor of freedom of assembly anddemocratic opposition. Meanwhile, his secret police lock up,torture, and execute students and Indian peasants in a sinistercastle by the sea where even the sharks have tired of a diet ofrevolutionary flesh. Then the opposition strikes back. Theybesiege the dictator's citadel, hoping to bring justice to a downtrodden,starving populace.Peter Bush's new translation of Valle-Inclan's seminal novel,the first into English since 1929, reveals a writer whose tragicsense of humor is as memorably grotesque and disturbing asGoya's in his The Disasters of War.