About this eBook
One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010. Shortlisted for the Best First Book in the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Ilustrado opens with Crispin Salvador, lion of Philippine letters, dead in the Hudson River. His young acolyte, Miguel, sets out to investigate the author’s suspicious death and the strange disappearance of an unfinished manuscript – a
work that had been planned not just to return the once-great author to fame but to expose the corruption behind the rich families who have ruled the Philippines for generations.
To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, charting Salvador’s trajectory his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns, become stories, become epic: family saga of four generations tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much as his lost mentor and we are treated to an unhindered view society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.
In the shifting terrain of this remarkably ambitious and daring first novel, Miguel Syjuco explores fatherhood, regret, revolution and the mysteries of lives lived and abandoned.
Ilustrado opens with Crispin Salvador, lion of Philippine letters, dead in the Hudson River. His young acolyte, Miguel, sets out to investigate the author’s suspicious death and the strange disappearance of an unfinished manuscript – a
work that had been planned not just to return the once-great author to fame but to expose the corruption behind the rich families who have ruled the Philippines for generations.
To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, charting Salvador’s trajectory his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns, become stories, become epic: family saga of four generations tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much as his lost mentor and we are treated to an unhindered view society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.
In the shifting terrain of this remarkably ambitious and daring first novel, Miguel Syjuco explores fatherhood, regret, revolution and the mysteries of lives lived and abandoned.
About the author
Miguel Syjuco is 32. He was born in Manila, lived for a decade in Canada, spent three years in Adelaide completing his PhD in creative writing and currently works as an editor at the Gazette in Montreal. Ilustrado won the largest literary prize in the Philippines, the Palanca Award and was recently awarded the Man Asia Literary Award for the best unpublished novel, written in English, by an Asian writer. Ilustrado is published by Farrar Straus Girroux in the US and Picador in the UK.
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