Gina Apostol

The first ever US publication of Gina Apostol's Philippine National Book Award-winning novel. Raymundo Mata is a visually impaired member of an anti-Spanish Philippine revolutionary society. Told in the form of a memoir, the novel traces Mata's childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of Jos Rizal and his books (Rizal is a real historical figure: an ophthalmologist by profession, he became a novelist and polemicist, and is considered the revolutionary father of Philippine independence and the nation's great writer; he was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities) which in turn involves him with the Philippine Revolution and, ultimately, Makamisa, Rizal's third and unfinished novel. Raymundo Mata's autobiography, however, is de-centered by another story: that of the development of the book. In the foreword(s), afterword(s), and footnotes, we see the translator Mimi C. Magsalin (a pseudonym), the rabid nationalist editor Estrella Espejo, and the neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic Dr. Diwata Drake make multiple readings of the Mata manuscript. Inevitably, clashes between these readings occur throughout the novel, and in the end no singular and comprehensive interpretation arises: depending on which interpretation the reader follows, one may either conclude that the manuscript contains and/or is Makamisa, or that it is an elaborate hoax perpetuated by the translator.

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The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

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