Augusto Roa Bastos(1917-2005)

Winner of the Cervantes Prize for Literature in Spanish, he was considered Paraguay's most important contemporary writer. He lived in exile for 42 years, leaving his homeland voluntarily because of political upheaval, but returning for good in the mid-1990s. He was often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Along with books, poems, and plays, he wrote screenplays, many of which were translated into several languages.