Don Vicente
Two Novels
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- € 3,49
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- € 3,49
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Written in elegant and precise prose, Don Vicente contains two novels in F. Sionil José's classic Rosales Saga. The saga, begun in José's novel Dusk, traces the life of one family, and that of their rural town of Rosales, from the Philippine revolution against Spain through the arrival of the Americans to, ultimately, the Marcos dictatorship.
The first novel here, Tree, is told by the loving but uneasy son of a land overseer. It is the story of one young man's search for parental love and for his place in a society with rigid class structures. The tree of the title is a symbol of the hopes and dreams--too often dashed--of the Filipino people.
The second novel, My Brother, My Executioner, follows the misfortunes of two brothers, one the editor of a radical magazine who is tempted by the luxury of the city, the other an activist who is prepared to confront all of his enemies, real or imagined. The critic I. R. Cruz called it "a masterly symphony" of injustice, women, sex, and suicide.
Together in Don Vicente, they form the second volume of the five-novel Rosales Saga, an epic the Chicago Tribune has called "a masterpiece."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The publisher has chosen to combine two novels (Tree and My Brother, My Executioner) in this second volume of the reissued Rosales Saga by Filipino writer Jos . The two works, first published in Manila in 1924, are loosely held together by geography--both take place in the Philippines--and by the presence of Don Vincente Asperri, a rapacious feudal landlord. In the first, less interesting, section, a middle-aged man looks back on his youth as the son of the overseer for Don Vincente. Characters amble across the stage, tell their story or anecdote, then disappear: an old priest lives in abject poverty in order to save money for church renovations; a young man learns he cannot fight the establishment when he is betrayed by the very people he wants to help. The longer section deals with Luis Asperri, the illegitimate son of the "all-powerful, all-devouring" Don Vincente. Luis and his half-brother Victor (same mother, different fathers) choose opposing sides in a peasant uprising. Luis, though Don Vincente's heir, considers himself liberal. He writes poetry and edits a left-wing magazine, but in many ways he is as heartless as his father. At Don Vincente's insistence, in order to keep the family fortune intact, Luis marries a cousin instead of his city girlfriend, with tragic results all around. When the chips are down, he will not divest himself of his lands as his brother Victor, leader of the revolutionary Huks, demands. Jos --founding president of the Philippines PEN Center, bookseller, and editor and publisher of a literary journal--fills the story with melodramatic events (a mad woman in an attic, a deformed baby) and with heavy-handed political rhetoric, perhaps better suited to essays. As a result, both narratives seem somewhat unsophisticated.
