Zama

Zama is a 1956 novel by Argentine writer Antonio di Benedetto. Existential in nature, the plot centers around the eponymous Don Diego de Zama, a minor official of the colonial Spanish Empire stationed in remote Paraguay during the late 18th century, and his attempts to receive a long-awaited promotion and transfer to Buenos Aires in the face of personal and professional stagnation. Di Benedetto drew heavily from Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. These existential themes of inward and outward stasis because of circumstance drive the novel's narrative as being constantly in motion yet never changing. Together with two of his other novels, El silenciero (1964) and Los suicidas (1969), Zama has been published as part of Benedetto's informal La trilogía de la espera (The Trilogy of Waiting). The novel is considered by various critics to be a major work of Argentine literature.