Zama

An NYRB Classics Original<br><br> First published in 1956 <i>Zama </i>is now universally recognized as one of the masterpieces of modern Argentine and Spanish-language literature. <br> &#160;<br> Written in a style that is both precise and sumptuous weirdly archaic and powerfully novel <i>Zama</i> 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 Asunci&#243;n the capital of remote Paraguay. There eaten up by pride lust petty grudges and paranoid fantasies he does as little as he possibly can while plotting his eventual transfer to Buenos Aires where everything about his hopeless existence will he is confident be miraculously transformed and made good. <br> &#160;<br> Don Diego&#146;s slow nightmarish slide into the abyss is not just a tale of one man&#146;s perdition but an exploration of existential and very American loneliness. <i>Zama</i> with its stark dreamlike prose and spare imagery is at once dense and unforeseen terse and fateful marked throughout by a haunting movement between sentences paragraphs and sections so that every word seems to emerge from an ocean of things left unsaid. The philosophical depths of this great book spring directly from its dazzling prose.