Author Topic: Accolades for a Filipino writer’s brilliant, award-winning novel  (Read 9123 times)

Joe Carillo

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Montreal-based Filipino novelist Miguel “Chuck” Syjuco, whose English-language novel Ilustrado (Picador, 320 pages) won the 2008 Man Asian prize before it was even published, came to Manila recently to promote his widely acclaimed book. He was feted by book lovers—among them leading lights of Philippine literature in English—in what became a book launch at the Filipinas Heritage Library in Makati City last April 14. Among those who paid tribute to Syjuco during the book launch were Dr. Jose Dalisay, Jr., Palanca Awards Hall of Famer and English Professor, and Antonio Hidalgo, book publisher and multi-awarded writer in English and Filipino.


Syjuco’s Ilustrado, which recently also won the grand prize of the 2009 Palanca Awards,   
is a literary mystery told through a pastiche of fictional newspaper clippings, interviews, novel excerpts, and the personal narrative of a young writer trying to make sense of the death of the novel’s hero. What unfolds in this complex, multifaceted storytelling is a family saga of four generations spanning 150 years of the Philippines as a Spanish and American colony and later as an independent nation.

The judges of the Man Asian Literary Prize said of the book: “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.”

Read Jose Dalisay’s tribute to Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado in the Philippine Star now!

Read Antonio Hidalgo’s 2008 review of Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado now!

Read Joyce Hor-Chung Lau's review of Ilustrado in The New York Times

Read an excerpt from Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado now!

« Last Edit: June 21, 2010, 08:21:37 PM by Joe Carillo »