Glenn Diaz’s second novel is set in the busting-at-the-seams capital of Manila, in a district named only as T—, characterized by “the density, the closely packed, in-your-face life that sometimes felt like drowning.” Diaz’s complex female protagonist is ex-academic Yñiga Calinauan, now reduced to ghost-writing theses for foreign students. She also believes in astrology which “made better sense than religion, just a nice, healthy balance between faith and free will. And at night when you look up you see proof of it every time.” She survives on coffee, diet Coke and cigarettes and dotes on her rescue cat Jestoni, yielding “first waking thoughts, punctual and constant: caffeine and cat.”
Author: Rosanne Salazar
Rogelio Sicat (or Sikat), often referred to as “one of the greatest pioneers of Philippine fiction”, along other young writers in the 1960s, chose to write in Tagalog in deliberate reaction to the literature written in English during the American occupation. Sixty years after his Bleeding Sun was written, this translation by his daughter Maria Aurora is a step towards making Sicat’s work more accessible.
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