Abstract
Although narrative literary works of fiction cannot represent the -real world outside the text-, they provide a peculiar means of understanding the world and human experience. The prolific Latin American tradition of -Dictator novel- (novela del dictador) could be regarded as an inquiry in the topic of power and its pathology.
It includes works of famous novelists such as Miguel Ángel Asturias, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa; nevertheless, only very little attention has been paid to this tradition in Czech and Slovak literary scholarship. Initially, this paper presents some remarks on the essayistic biography Facundo by Argentine author D.
F. Sarmiento which is regarded as the foundational text of the genre.
Subsequently, it focuses on some essential 20th century dictator novels, particularly on Reasons of State by Alejo Carpentier (1975) which shows a refined comprehension of the relation between the rhetorics, mythology and power. Finally, it concentrates on the representation of power in By Night in Chile (2000), a brief novel by Roberto Bolaño which is a soliloquy of a dying Chilean priest who, step by step, surrenders himself to the force of military Augusto Pinochet's military regime.
The paper proposes an interpretation which regards Sarmiento's influential opposition between civilisation and barbarism.