Man Asian Literary Price Analysis

Summary

A novel that made me realized more about the Philippine setting and Philippine literature. A novel that REALLY IS hard for me to digest. However, I will try it out to summarize a Man Asian Literary Price in one page, if ever I failed, forgive me.

Ilustrado, an award-winning, “Man Asian Literary Price” was about the two great thinkers and writers of their time. To name as such are Crispin Salvador and Miguel Syjuco. The novel itself started with a plot – a backward scheme. The plot was controversial due to Salvador’s death: did Crispin died due to suicide or murder? If murder, who had the intention to kill him?

It was the time during the Marcos regime as Marcos declared martial law when Salvador fled the Philippines in 1972. A man

It was showed when the protagonist went back to the Philippines. It is a novel that talks about journey or voyage. It tells the concept of family as a home which reminds me of a Filipino maxim, “ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinangalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan” – quoted by Jose Rizal. Before anything else, the values aforementioned which were exhibited well in the novel was ideally due to the quest of the various forms of writing piled in one novel. Writing, historical documents, newspaper clippings, interviews, found testimonies, letters, email correspondence, and running jokes which were mixed that adds credibility and illusory on the novel. They were exhibited by the stylistic narrative techniques, setting, and themes that were intellectually hand-eyed. No doubt, it won awards and became word of the mouth by its readers and literary writers. Lastly, adding the ideological context about the values being depicted and how these were exhibited, the novel talked various themes bearing various Filipino values as what I had said earlier. This was successfully exhibited due to its artistic way of designs and techniques that a literary writer could