|
Readers of literature in Filipino have more cause to
celebrate the summer months with the release of Zosimo Quibilan
Jr.’s Pagluwas. Published by the University of the Philippines
Press, this book marks the arrival of a distinct new voice that is
sure to make a mark in the Philippine literary scene.
Prize-winning author and creative
writing professor Jun Cruz Reyes describes Pagluwas as belonging to
the nontraditional or postmodern stream of writing. Composed of 52
fragmented tales about the passengers who board a bus bound for
Manila from the mountain city of Baguio and subsequently get
involved in a brutal vehicular collision, Pagluwas is what the
author himself calls a “surreal contemporary narrative.” It
“tells of what happened before the liquor bottles, hygiene items,
vegetables, loves and lives exploded into oblivion . . . a
half-novel, half-anthology of an exploded narrative that gives new
meaning to the term ‘we are what we leave behind’ in all its
important and ephemera.”
National Artist Bienvenido
Lumbera credits the author’s engaging narrative style, his smooth
use of colloquial language, and his ability to hold the reader’s
curiosity for the success of Pagluwas, while Reyes calls the book an
invaluable contribution not just to the development of fiction
written in Filipino, but to Philippine contemporary literature in
general.
Pagluwas is published by the
University of the Philippine Press and is available at Aeon Books on
Katipunan, Popular Bookstore on Tomas Morato, Solidaridad,
Powerbooks, National Book Store, Bound Bookshop, Fully Booked, and
at the University of the Philippines Press bookstores in UP Diliman,
Baguio and Davao.
|
