 Set in post @-@ colonial Buenos Aires , Amalia was written in two parts and is a semi @-@ autobiographical account of José Mármol that deals with living in Rosas 's police state . Mármol 's novel was important as it showed how the human consciousness , much like a city or even a country , could become a terrifying prison . Amalia also attempted to examine the problem of dictatorships as being one of structure , and therefore the problem of the state " manifested through the will of some monstrous personage violating the ordinary individual 's privacy , both of home and of consciousness . " In the early twentieth century , the Spaniard Ramón del Valle @-@ <unk> 's Tirano Banderas ( 1926 ) acted as a key influence on those authors whose goal was to critique power structures and the status quo . 
