Filipino Centennial Novels Reviewed

Shirlita A. Espinosa of UPLB reviewed three of the six winners in the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize for the Novel in Filipino: Aurelio S. Agcaoili’s Dangadang, B. S. Medina, Jr.’s Huling Himagsik and Jun Cruz Reyes’s Etsa-puwera. I haven’t read the first two books yet but Reyes’s novel I have read at least twice—when I first bought it in the Book Fair sometime in 2000 (or 2001), and then when I required it in my Filipino 11 classes in 2002. Espinosa’s reading on the novels that focuses on their respective notions of ethnicity & kinship in the ideas and practices of nationalism is somewhat not so favorable to any of the three books. You can access the whole essay here.

~ by ecsamar on February 26, 2008.