Zama
Antonio di Benedetto
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
4.00
· 16 ratings · 224 pages · Published: 1956
Written in a style that is both precise and sumptuous, Zama takes place in the last decade of the eighteenth century and describes the solitary, suspended existence of Don Diego de Zama, a highly placed servant of the Spanish crown who has been posted to Asunción, in remote Paraguay. Eaten up by pride, lust, petty grudges, and paranoid fantasies, Don Diego does as little as he possibly can while plotting an eventual transfer to Beunos Aires, where everything about his hopeless existence will, he is confident, be miraculously transformed and made good.
Don Diego's slow, nightmarish slide into the abyss is not just a tale of one man's perdition but an exploration of existential, and very American, loneliness. Zama's stark, dreamlike prose and spare imagery make every word appear to emerge from an ocean of things left unsaid.
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- historical 3
- historical fiction 3
- classics 3
- 20th century 3
- literary fiction 3
- existentialism 2
- political 2
- colonization 2
- action / adventure 1
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- audiobook 2
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- adult fiction 1