Alejo Capentier's Reasons of State was first published in Spanish in 1974, the year of Roa Bastos I, The Supreme and the year before Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch. Together those three books constitute the essential Latin American dictator novels. Carpentier's work contains themes that remain urgently relevant today: political answerability, the relationship between modern Latin America and richer nations, as well as the ever-prevalent notion of boom-and-bust.