Sins
A Novel
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- ¥850
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- ¥850
発行者による作品情報
Don Carlos lies on his deathbed, determined to tell all. Don Carlos lies, as they say, through his teeth.
in this slim, powerful novel, F. Sionil Jose, one of the leading literary voices of Asia and the Pacific, tells all. Don Carlos Cobello, a worldly man, has been a diplomat, entrepreneur, gourmand, and sinner. Like other memoirists, he reveals more than he intends. Born to wealth, he was determined to increase it. Born to corruption, he sees no reason to give up too much of a good thing. Born of woman, he sets about seducing -- or simply taking -- every woman he sees, starting with his sister.
He is a prince of accommodation; his family has drawn close to power no matter who dominated their islands, be it the Spanish, the Japanese, or the Americans. (A woman shared with a Japanese colonel in a family-owned brothel returns their favors by passing on to one the disease of the other.)
The colorful cast includes a "hero of the Revolution" who purchased land with revolutionary funds, a close poker-playing friend of General Douglas MacArthur, and the illegitimate son of a maid who later becomes a lawyer destined for greatness.
Cobello's wealth, incest, and casual infidelities are no hindrance to an upwardly mobile career. In the "incredible reality that is the Philippines," says Jose, "the higher one goes, the whiter one becomes." For, as Cobello puts it, "here, sin is a social definition, not a moral one."
Sins will add to the stature of F. Sionil Jose and to his growing reputation in the United States.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Flamboyantly injecting an aristocratic family chronicle into Philippine history, Jose (Three Filipino Women) brings a novelistic authority to match the worldly authority of his lustful, patrician protagonist. Corrupt and exploitative, Don Carlos Corbello, aka C.C., is a general of international industry, the illustrious son of one of the country's canniest mestizo families, one whose members have a tradition of furthering their ambitions through expedient service to political masters--the Spanish, the Americans, the Japanese and President Marcos. Reviewing his life in a deathbed confession, C.C., in the way of unreliable and morally obtuse narrators, tries to bury a sense of regret under boasts of lineage, power and amorous exploits. "Sin," he says, "is a social definition, not a moral one." In his formative youth, Carlos forces himself on a housemaid, Severina, manages his father's wartime bordello for Japanese officers (on whom he spies) and fathers a daughter, Angela, with his sister, Corito (passing on brothel-contracted syphilis to both). In adulthood, he conducts strangely bittersweet romances during his business travels in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. But when his power seems consolidated under Marcos, he learns that Severina had a son, Delfin, who has arrived in Manila to study law and fight for reform. Avoiding any political resolution, Jose orchestrates a swift climax for Carlos, Delfin, Corito and Angela, as the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons in an ironic twist.
