Review: Zama (Author: Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen). As a researcher interested in the science of waiting times, I read Zama with great interest to understand how literature treats waiting. Zama is a tale of one man’s slow descent into perdition, a catalog of unfulfilled dreams and airy castles in future, and a compelling narrative of a mind idling in vacuous machinations. Don Diego de Zama is posted in a remote outpost of Asuncion, Paraguay in the late 18th century, separated from his wife and family and the civilized society of Buenos Aires where he aspires to be instead. Zama believes the posting to be a temporary blip in his exalted bureaucratic service — an onerous test of…
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