World Books Podcast: Filipino author Miguel Syjuco

By ⋅ June 21, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment
Play
Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

For many readers, Filipino literature is about local color, lush descriptions of an exotic and often dreamy landscape. Miguel Syjuco challenges that pastoral vision with his first novel, Ilustrado, which recently won the Man Asian Literary Prize. An ambitious meditation on turbulent decades of Filipino culture and politics, the novel includes emails, blog entries, news reports, and extracts from the fiction and journalism of an imaginary literary lion. His mysterious death triggers a quest to find his final manuscript, which is rumored to be an explosive tell-all. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to Syjuco about what his complex novel says about the past and future of the Philippines. Download MP3

Discussion

One comment for “World Books Podcast: Filipino author Miguel Syjuco”

  • Juan Luna Ibarrizto

    Excerpted from Panay News, Iloilo, Philippines, September 16, 2010.

    BOBOY’S PRIVILEGE SPEECH
    CONG. Boboy Syjuco, who is facing a plunder case, delivered a privilege speech before his peers in the Lower House recently.
    His piece was about the August 23 hostage-taking incident in Luneta, Manila where eight Chinese visitors were killed by the hostage-taker.
    It is evident that the controversial solon wanted to ingratiate himself to President Noynoy so that it may help solve his cases on massive graft and corruption.
    Boboy wanted to join the Liberal Party, but he was rejected. In the first place, LP Chairman for Iloilo Cong. Jun-Jun Tupas Jr. does not like his “fungus face” (to borrow Inday Miriam’s words).
    Anyway, according to our Malacañang source, Pres. Noynoy was not impressed by his esoteric prose.

    *Congressman Syjuco is the father of the author.