Introduction: The papier-mache parrot
Writing aporia: aesthetics and politics in the dictator novel of the global South
Tabula rasa: Juan Manuel de Rosas and the emergence of the dictator as a literary figure
Fathers of the fatherlands: writing, politics, and literary form at the end of the Latin American "boom"
Mesaventures: the politics and poetics of the dictator novel in the African postcolony
The dictator in the corpolony: on the dictator novel in the time of transition
Afterword: Moving outward and forward.