Celebrating the centennial of his birth, the first-ever U.S. publication of Philippine writer Nick Joaquin's seminal works, with a foreword by PEN/Open Book Award-winner Gina Apostol.
Nick Joaquin (1917-2004) is widely considered the most important
Filipino writer in English. A novelist, poet, playwright, essayist,
journalist, and biographer, he was honored for his work as a
National Artist of the Philippines.His works include two novels,
The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Cave and Shadows; three
collections of short fiction; two volumes of poetry; and numerous
works of nonfiction.
Gina Apostol won the Philippine National Book Award for her first
two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo
Mata. Her third novel, Gun Dealers' Daughter, was shortlisted for
the William Saroyan International Prize and won the PEN/Open Book
Award. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts.
Vicente L. Rafael a professor of history at the University of
Washington, specializing in southeast Asian history. He has written
widely on the political and cultural history of the Philippines,
and his works include Contracting Colonialism, White Love and Other
Events in Filipino History, The Promise of the Foreign, and, most
recently,Motherless Tongues- The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars
of Translation.
Nick Joaquin is akin to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the extravagant,
surreal imagery of his stories, the fatalistic humor, the intricate
weaving of history and memory, the spiritual and the sensual, the
personal and the political. He is a writer deserving wider
recognition, whose magical Macondo was the very real Philippines,
in all its beauty, splendor and ruin. Behold this collection of
marvels
*Jessica Hagedorn*
The Philippines is central to two empires, the Spanish and the
American. Joaquin is central to the literature of the Philippines.
To read Joaquin is to gain access to how three cultures intersected
in the Pacific, mixing explosively with blood, violence, and
fantasy in ways that foreshadow what is happening in the
Philippines today. As with all great writers, Joaquin remains our
contemporary
*Viet Thanh Nguyen*
Manila was Joaquin s birthplace and his muse; yet the priests,
socialites, and activists who populate these pages also evoke a
globetrotting intellect and a wondrous universe all his own. This
book brilliantly captures the singular genius of Nick Joaquin, and
will seduce readers everywhere who are meeting this giant of
Philippine literature for the first time
*Mia Alvar*
One cannot overstate what Nick Joaquin is to Philippine literature.
Writing in English with the melody of Spanish and Tagalog, Joaquin
was the first Filipino writer to focus on the impossible
contradictions of a tribal civilization overlain by Spanish and
American world views. And because that tribal civilization was
woman-centered, Joaquin's heroines are as complex, romantic and
defiant as Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina
*Ninotchka Rosca*
A standout collection (...) a transporting read, and a fierce elegy
for a past that never was
*NPR*
Steeped in Filipino history and culture, Joaquin's work is a
welcome discovery
*Kirkus Reviews*
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