Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he became a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable and amoral world.
The history of Paraguay encompasses thousands of years of human habitation. Both agricultural and nomadic Guaycuruan lived in the region at the time of the Spanish Conquest. It became a relatively neglected part of the Spanish Empire due to its isolation and lack of mineral wealth, nonetheless a small group of Spanish settlers came to reside in the area, increasingly intermarrying with native women to produce a mestizo population. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Jesuit missionaries organized the natives into planned communities known as reducciones, and the experiment gained notable attention in Enlightenment Era Europe.
Political fiction employs narrative to comment on political events, systems and theories. Works of political fiction, such as political novels, often "directly criticize an existing society or present an alternative, even fantastic, reality". The political novel overlaps with the social novel, proletarian novel, and social science fiction.
Ian Watt was a literary critic, literary historian and professor of English at Stanford University.
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham was a Scottish politician, writer, journalist and adventurer. He was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP); the first ever socialist member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; a founder, and the first president, of the Scottish Labour Party; a founder of the National Party of Scotland in 1928; and the first president of the Scottish National Party in 1934.
A caudillo is a type of personalist leader wielding military and political power. There is no precise English translation for the term, though it is often used interchangeably with "military dictator," "warlord" and "strongman". The term is historically associated with Spain and Hispanic America, after virtually all of the regions in the latter won independence in the early nineteenth century.
Ellen Louise Ripley is a fictional character and the original protagonist of the Alien film series, played by American actress Sigourney Weaver. Considered one of the greatest characters in science fiction film history, the character earned Weaver worldwide recognition, and remains her most famous role to date. Although she was originally conceived as male for the first Alien film, director Ridley Scott decided early in production to make her a woman.
The Mask of Zorro is a 1998 American Western swashbuckler film based on the fictional character Zorro by Johnston McCulley. It was directed by Martin Campbell and stars Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Stuart Wilson. The film features the original Zorro, Don Diego de la Vega (Hopkins), escaping from prison to find his long-lost daughter (Zeta-Jones) and avenge the death of his wife at the hands of the corrupt governor Rafael Montero (Wilson). He is aided by his successor (Banderas), who is pursuing his own vendetta against the governor's right-hand man while falling in love with de la Vega's daughter.
Augusto Roa Bastos was a Paraguayan novelist and short story writer. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia, and he later worked as a journalist, screenwriter and professor. He is best known for his complex novel Yo el Supremo and for winning the Premio Miguel de Cervantes in 1989, Spanish literature's most prestigious prize. Yo el Supremo explores the dictations and inner thoughts of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the eccentric dictator of Paraguay who ruled with an iron fist, from 1814 until his death in 1840.
Juan Bautista Gill García was President of Paraguay from November 25, 1874 to April 12, 1877 and the only Paraguayan President to be assassinated while in office.
The Huexotzinco Codex or Huejotzingo Codex is a colonial-era Nahua pictorial manuscript, one of the group of manuscripts collectively known as Aztec codices. It is an eight-sheet document on amatl, a pre-European paper made in Mesoamerica, and consists of part of the testimony in a legal case against members of the First Audiencia in Mexico, particularly its president, Nuño de Guzmán, ten years after the 1521 Spanish conquest.
Almayer's Folly is Joseph Conrad's first novel, published in 1895 by T. Fisher Unwin. Set in the late 19th century, it centres on the life of the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer in the Borneo jungle and his relationship to his mixed heritage daughter Nina.
The Silver Pigs is a 1989 historical mystery crime novel by Lindsey Davis and the first book in the Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries series. Set in Rome and Britannia during AD 70, just after the year of the four emperors, the novel stars Marcus Didius Falco, informer and imperial agent. The book's title refers to 200-pound lead ingots "pigs" filled with silver ore and stolen from Roman Britain, which feature prominently in the plot.
Cristóbal de Oñate was a Spanish Basque explorer, conquistador and colonial official in New Spain. He is considered the founder of the contemporary city of Guadalajara in 1531, as well as other places in Nueva Galicia.
I, the Supreme is a historical novel written by exiled Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos. It is a fictionalized account of the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who was also known as "Dr. Francia." The book's title derives from the fact that Francia referred to himself as "El Supremo" or "the Supreme." The first in a long line of dictators, the Supreme was a severe, calculating despot. The central themes of the novel are power and language and the relation between the two. The Supreme believes himself to be above all power and history: "I don't write history. I make it. I can remake it as I please, adjusting, stressing, enriching its meaning and truth." 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. Not even his own identity, represented by the personal pronoun I, is safe and can easily be usurped as is demonstrated by the incident of the pasquinade. Language, as powerful as it is, can never be controlled and can just as easily be used as an instrument of coercion as an instrument of resistance.
Nostromo is a 1997 British-Italian television drama series directed by Alastair Reid and produced by Fernando Ghia of Pixit Productions, a co-production with Radiotelevisione Italiana, Televisión Española, and WGBH Boston. The music is composed by Ennio Morricone. It stars Claudio Amendola, Paul Brooke, Lothaire Bluteau, Claudia Cardinale, Colin Firth and Albert Finney. It is described as "an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's epic story Nostromo of political upheaval, greed and romance in turn-of-the-20th-century South America."
"The Three Caballeros Ride Again" is a 2000 Donald Duck comic by Don Rosa.
The Silver Treasure is a 1926 American silent action drama film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring George O'Brien. It is based on the 1904 novel Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. It was produced and distributed by the Fox Film Corporation.
The sacking of Asunción was the occupation of the Paraguayan capital carried out as of January 1, 1869 by Brazilian forces in the Triple Alliance led by General João de Souza da Fonseca Costa. Asunción was deserted, evacuated by all its inhabitants two days before. On January 5, Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, then Marquis of Caxias, entered the city with the rest of the army. Most of Caxias' army settled in Asunción, where also 4,000 Argentine and 200 Uruguayan troops soon arrived together with about 800 soldiers and officers of the Paraguayan Legion. By this time Caxias was ill and weary of the war. On January 17 he fainted during a mass, relinquished his command on the 18th and left for Montevideo on the 19th.
Agustín Cañete García was a Paraguayan politician. He served in various presidential cabinets through a political life which spanned more than three decades. Most famously, he was Minister of Finance of Paraguay three times; in two of these instances, he resigned from the position amidst accusations of corruption.
