Ilustrado - Hardcover

It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River – taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Missing, too, is the only manuscript of his final book – meant to rescue him from obscurity by exposing the corrupt roots of power behind the Filipino ruling families. His student, Miguel, investigates, journeying home from a city still in shock from terrorist attacks to a country caught between reckless decay and desperate progress. To understand his mentor’s death, Miguel scours the life, charting Salvador’s trajectory via his poetry, stories, interviews, novels, and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns become stories become epic: a generations-long saga of revolution, familial duty, political intrigue, and a people’s enduring struggle against their own worst tendencies. This is a clever, bravura, and exuberant debut novel from a new literary sensation. ‘Brilliantly conceived, and stylishly executed, [Ilustrado] covers a large and tumultuous historical period with seemingly effortless skill. It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humour’ Judges of the Man Asian Literary Prize ‘Miguel Syjuco’s dizzyingly energetic and inventive novel views his native Philippines with a merciless yet loving eye, its chorus of voices illuminating the many facets of this chaotic, complicated country. An ambitious and admirable debut.’ Janice Y. K. Lee, author of The Piano Teacher ‘Vulnerable and mischievous, sophisticated and naïve, Ilustrado explores the paradoxes that come with the search for identity and throws readers into the fragile space between self-pursuit and self-destruction. A novel about country and self, youth and experience, it is elegiac, thoughtful and original’ Colin McAdam, author of Fall and Some Great Thing ‘From the ruckus of rumors, blogs, ambitions, overweening grandparents, indifferent History, and personal crimes, Miguel Syjuco has innovatively re-imagined that most wonderfully old-fashioned consolation: literature. Ilustrado is a great novel’ Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances ‘A fantastic literary mystery that draws from the politics and poetics of Manila . . . Ilustrado is global in all aspects of the story, and frank and unpretentious in every right-on detail. With originality and insight, Syjuco writes of romance and ambition between grad students and lit stars who connive to form a literary island of their own—one that threatens to distract and estrange Miguel from a deeper responsibility to his literary father and their shared past.’ Lee Henderson, Author of The Man Game ‘Ilustrado now suddenly reminds some of . . . the best of Roberto Bolaño; and many readers will soon be able to marvel, as I did, at the richness and depth of human experience it reveals’ Pankaj Mishra, Guardian ‘Through virtuoso use of language and a dazzling array of fictional techniques, it achieves all of its lofty objectives . . . It deserves all the accolades it has won. It is among the finest novels written by a Filipino. Perhaps, even, by any writer’ Antonio A. Hidalgo, chairman of judges of the 2008 Palanca Award for the Novel