About this item

The first ever US publication of Gina Apostol's Philippine National Book Award-winning novel.The story of Raymundo Mata, a visually impaired member of a 19th century anti-Spanish Philippine revolutionary society, is a polyphonic whirlwind of voices and histories. Told in the form of a memoir, the novel traces Mata's childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of the writer and revolutionary, Jose Rizal. Mata's autobiography, however, is de-centered by present-day foreword(s) , afterword(s) , and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices: a nationalist editor, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic, and a translator, Mimi C. Magsalin (who alsoappeared as a character in Apostol's novel Insurrecto) . In telling the contested and fragmentary story of Mata, Apostol finds new ways to depict the violence of the Spanish colonial era, and to reimagine the nation's great writer, Jose Rizal, who is considered by many to be the father of Philippine independence and was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities.



About the Author

Gina Apostol

Before her fourth book hit the shelves, Publishers Weekly chose Gina Apostol's Insurrecto as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018. Her third book, Gun Dealers' Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award) . A work-in-progress, William McKinley's World, like Insurrecto, uses her research on the Balangiga massacre and the Filipino-American War to cast a lens on our contemporary times. She was writer-in-residence at Phillips Exeter Academy and a fellow at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy, among other fellowships. Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Philippines. She teaches at the Fieldston School in New York City. website: ginaapostol.com



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