http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Sionil_Jos%C3%A9
One of the more remarkable things about reading The Pretenders this summer was how it related to my own journey in life. The Pretenders both (1) mirrored and (2) reverse-mirrored characters and events in my life as well as the life of the main characters in this novel by Jose. More interestingly, because of my family dealings at the US Embassy in Ermita town and in the St. Luke Medical Annex (also in Ermita, a very infamous neighborhood in ManilaCity), I was forced to travel the streets some of the same streets as the main characters traveled as I read Jose's novel, The Pretenders. The brothels, bars, casinos, and love hotels are still there.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_summary_of_ermita_a_novel_by_Sionil_Jose
ABOUT THE AUTHOR--FRANCISCO SIONIL JOSE
Before reviewing the novel, The Pretenders (i.e. in light of my own experience in Ermita town and other parts of the Philippines and planet Earth), allow me to share a little about the author, F. Sionil Jose, and his background. First of all, in 2004, F. Sionil Jose won the Pablo Neruda Centennial Award for Literature. He has also won several other Asian and Filipino writing and journalism awards. Jose, who has written primarily in English, rather than his native language of Ilucano--or any of a dozen languages of the Philippines--, has made a tremendous impact on Asian literature, while often having too little recognition in most corners of his own homeland. (I would be surprised if more than one in ten Filipinos--in or outside the country--could tell you who he is. This may because he is so critical of the local plutocrats in Negros, Mindanao and Luzon.)
Le Monde author, Philippe Pons, writes of Jose, "Seldom has a writer reflected so well the qualities and the failings of his people. Francisco Sionil Jose . . . crossed this [past 20th] century embracing the hopes and the disillusions of his land: his essays and his articles as well as his novels are inseparable from the modern history of the Philippines."
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