A rich historical novel - part love story and part tragedy - about the Irish courtesan Eliza Lynch, and how she became mistress to one of South America's first, and most extravagant, dictators.

This book draws on and reimagines the career of the man who was elected Supreme Dictator for Life in Paraguay in 1814. By turns grotesque, comic, and strangely moving, I the Supreme is a profound meditation on the uses and abuses of power--over men, over events, over language itself.