Saturday, May 15, 2010

Sujuco's Novel of Philippine Politics

My family, my friends, my colleagues — we are the elites .. We are a wealthy, beautiful country, and we’ve screwed it up so badly.
Filipino author Miguel Syjuco's whose first novel, Ilustrado  :
... a satire of the chaos and violence of Philippine politics ...
won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008, is interviewed in The New York Times by Joyce Hor-Chung Lau.  The novel is released next month and features a main character who is called ... Miguel Syjuco!

 And who better to write about the turmoil in the Philippines than someone who is the son of a politician? :
His real-life father, Augusto Syjuco Jr., known as Boboy, stepped down from a cabinet post in the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to run for Congress in national elections on Monday.
You can also hear an interview with Sujuco on NPR.

5 comments:

umapagan said...

It's a wonderful book Sharon. There is a review of it that'll be in Well Lit on the first Wednesday of June. Check it out. :)

Amir Muhammad said...

Is this the first Southeast Asian author's book in Well.Lit??

bibliobibuli said...

hey how did you get hold of a copy, Uma? am so looking forward to this. and i think it sounds a pretty relevant novel for us here too.

umapagan said...

Amir: No he isn't actually. Next week's issue features a couple of recommendations by Farish for Danny Lim's (Malaysian Ghosts - one of yours I believe... :P) and Sufian Abas' (Kasut Biru). Got photo of cover and everything.

Sharon: I got my copy from Amazon a couple weeks ago. And yes, it is very relevant for our times...

John Ling said...

Good Q&A with the author in Time Magazine as well.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1988430,00.html