{"title":"Miguel Syjuco","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"ilustrado-book-miguel-syjuco-9780330510028","title":"Ilustrado","description":"‘A dazzling and virtuosic adventure’ Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea   Internationally Bestselling Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008   ‘With Ilustrado, Miguel Syjuco obliges us to remake the canons of our great classics of contemporary literature. Ilustrado is, literally, a masterpiece’ Alberto Manguel   It begins with a body. One anonymous winter day, the corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River. Gone is the controversial giant of Asian literature. And missing is the only manuscript of his final book, an exposé of the corrupt roots of the ruling Filipino families, meant to restore his once dazzling reputation. His student, Miguel, is suspicious of the suicide verdict. He investigates: first sifting through the dead man’s work for clues, then journeying from New York to Manila, seeking out family, colleagues, and anyone who might hold pieces of the puzzle.   But when Miguel assembles the fragments of his mentor’s past, this ambitious and rewarding novel expands into far wider contexts – political, social, historical, literary. As patterns emerge, the mystery of a death deepens into the greater mysteries of life – and the reader makes increasingly significant discoveries of their own, until the startling revelation of the final page.   ‘A big, bold, cunning, impassioned, plangent and very funny book’ Scotsman   ‘Bristling with comic verve, metafictional playfulness, and an undertone of expatriate nostalgia . . . an impressive, vibrant mix of Borgesian literary labyrinth and acerbic émigré comedy’ Sunday Times   ‘A seethingly ambitious debut . . . 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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 naive, 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 Bolano; 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","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49585109664017,"sku":"GOR001924562","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51764883849489,"sku":"GOR006006758","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52888809242897,"sku":"GOR002850425","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0330510002.jpg?v=1765014954"},{"product_id":"i-was-the-president-s-mistress-book-miguel-syjuco-9780374174057","title":"I Was the President's Mistress!!","description":"First came the Sexy-Sexygate scandal. Then an impeachment trial. Finally, a battle royale for the presidency. At the center of this political typhoon is Vita Nova, the most famous movie star in the Phillippines and a former paramour of the country's most powerful man. Now, for the first time ever, she bares herself completely in a tell-all memoir that puts the sensational in sensationalistic.   The setting: a sweating, heaving country. The time: right now. The plot: a drug war rages, an assassin brandishes a pistol, a damsel rises from ashes to power, and a government teeters on the brink. Among the players: a dreamer who boxed and acted his way to the presidency, his Koran-toting nemesis in the senate, a horny bishop, a cowboy turned warlord, a poor little rich boy dying with his dynasty, a washed-up reporter redeemed by one last scoop, a high-school sweetheart driven mad by decades of disappointment, and an American naval officer tempting our heroine with a way out. As Vita warns, viewer discretion is advised.   In this masterful and audacious novel, Miguel Syjuco's signature style-hilarious, insightful, playful, provocative-animates thirteen indelible voices whose stories present a cross-section of a complicated society. I Was the President's Mistress!! hurtles headlong into love, politics, faith, history, memory, and the ongoing war over who will tell the stories the world shall know as truth.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49726146314513,"sku":"GOR012356781","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348035342609,"sku":"CIN0374174059G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51895375495441,"sku":"CIN0374174059VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374174059.jpg?v=1751441352"},{"product_id":"i-was-the-president-s-mistress-book-miguel-syjuco-9781250863133","title":"I Was the President's Mistress!!","description":"How much would you sacrifice for what you believe?  Is what you believe even true?  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Ilustrado is, literally, a masterpiece’ – Alberto Manguel  Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53573725847825,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53573725913361,"sku":"NGR9781037409271","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-miguel-syjuco.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}