Augusto Roa Bastos (Iturbe, 1917 – Asunción, 2005) is the most important Paraguayan writer, and has been translated into 25 languages. At the age of 15, he ran away from school with some classmates to live the adventure of war. The horrors that he witnessed in those days converted him into a great defender of peace.
He was a journalist, film scriptwriter, playwright, and university teacher in Latin America and Europe. He won the Cervantes Prize in 1989, and donated the amount of the award to a Foundation called Fundalibro Cervantes which provides children and young people with free textbooks and education which is now sponsored by the United Nations (PNUD) and UNESCO.