"You are free now... Take off your clothes and go... No, you are not entitled to a coat. the only right you have is to go naked..." Thus the once all powerful hated dictator, Juan Gonzales, is released by his captors to walk home through the city streets - defeated, degraded and naked ... Highly praised when it was first published in Greece in 1973 The Fall of a Dictator is both an immensely powerful story and a dramatic political allegory of our times. Set in an unknown Latin American country but with clear parallels with the Greece of Colonels, this epic novel explores the nature of tyranny, of torture, of power at the moment when an army overthrows a despot and replaces him with a humane and just president. Like the Greek tragedies, there is a chorus, in the form of the people; there are cries and screams, marches, lamentations and figures emerging from the shadows. The atmosphere is one of menace, of suppressed rage illuminated by flashes of light - all conveyed in a tense, almost military manner. This is a memorable novel that raised important questions.
