A young woman pieces together her troubled past in this story of rebellion and romance set in the Marcos-era Philippines. Soon after she leaves home for university in Manila, Soledad Soliman (Sol) transforms herself from bookish rich girl to communist rebel. But is her allegiance to the principles of Mao or to Jed, the comrade she’s in love with? Can she really be a part of the movement or is she just a “useful fool,” a spoiled brat playing at revolution? Far from the Philippines, in a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, Sol confesses her youthful indiscretions, unable to get past the fatal act of communist fervor that locked her memory in an endless loop. Rich with wordplay and unforgettable imagery, Gun Dealers’ Daughter combines the momentum of an amnesiac thriller with the intellectual delights of a Borgesian puzzle. In her American debut, award-winning author Gina Apostol delivers a riveting novel that illuminates the conflicted and little-known history of the Philippines, a country deeply entwined with our own.

Gun Dealers' Daughter: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Apostol, Gina

United States

W.W.Norton&Company

Winner of the PEN/Open Book Award At university in Manila, young, bookish Soledad Soliman falls in with radical friends, defying her wealthy parents and their society crowd. Drawn in by two romantic young rebels, Sol initiates a conspiracy that quickly spirals out of control. Years later, far from her homeland, Sol reconstructs her fractured memories, writing a confession she hopes will be her salvation. Illuminating the dramatic history of the Marcos-era Philippines, this story of youthful passion is a tour de force.

Three stories from Gina Apostol, Eric Gamalinda, and Lara Stapleton.

The Thirdest World: 3 Stories by Filipino Writers

Stapleton, Lara

Gamalinda, Eric

Factory School

Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. Asian American Studies. THE THIRDEST WORLD includes the work of Gina Apostol, Eric Gamalinda, and Lara Stapleton, winners of the Philippine National Book Award, the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize, and the Pen Open book award, respectively. The three writers, from three greatly varied perspectives, take a look at the histories of struggle, travel and loss inherent to the colonial experience. Two works of fiction are included by each author, along with an essay that discusses the relationship between identity and narrative in each writer's work. All three writers see a profound relationship between postmodern structures and the disjointed history of a twice-colonized country: the Philippines changed hands from Spain to the United States in 1898. Passionate, intricate, witty, subtle, wise and wildly fresh and new, THE THIRDEST WORLD will give readers fascinating trips over the Pacific and into novel worlds of creativity. "These stories chart the strained divide between loyalty and identity: the tough blossoms that flower in the shadow of the American tree. THE THIRDEST WORLD is an important book, not only for its prescient chronicling of postcolonial Filipinos, but also for its hic et nunc observations of Filipino identities. Apostol, Gamalinda, and Stapleton are three writers who deserve an international audience." —Sabina Murray

The Thirdest World: Stories and Essays by Three Filipino Writers

Contemporary

Insurrecto

"A bravura performance."—The New York Times Histories and personalities collide in this literary tour-de-force about the Philippines’ present and America’s past by the PEN Open Book Award–winning author of Gun Dealers’ Daughter. Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip in Duterte’s Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created “a howling wilderness” of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara’s film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator—one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher. Within the spiraling voices and narrative layers of Insurrecto are stories of women—artists, lovers, revolutionaries, daughters—finding their way to their own truths and histories. Using interlocking voices and a kaleidoscopic structure, the novel is startlingly innovative, meditative, and playful. Insurrecto masterfully questions and twists narrative in the manner of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch, and Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Apostol pushes up against the limits of fiction in order to recover the atrocity in Balangiga, and in so doing, she shows us the dark heart of an untold and forgotten war that would shape the next century of Philippine and American history.

Soho Press

Genre Fiction

Soho Press,Inc

The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

The story of Raymundo Mata, a visually impaired member of a 19th century anti-Spanish Philippine revolutionary society, is a polyphonic whirlwind of voices and histories. Told in the form of a memoir, the novel traces Mata's childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of the writer and revolutionary, Jose Rizal. Mata's autobiography, however, is de-centred by present-day foreword(s), afterword(s), and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices: a nationalist editor, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic, and a translator, Mimi C. Magsalin (who also appeared as a character in Apostol's novel Insurrecto).

Dramas & Plays

Bibliolepsy

Moving, sexy, and archly funny, Gina Apostol’s Philippine National Book Award-winning Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship\nGina Apostol’s debut novel, available for the first time in the US, tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution.\nIt is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors.\nFor Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable “Justice League” of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, “a vagabond from history, a runaway from time,” can be saved by sex, love, and books.

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, The

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Books by Apostol, Gina

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Apostol, Gina. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Gun Dealers' Daughter: A Novel

Gun Dealers' Daughter: A Novel

The Thirdest World: 3 Stories by Filipino Writers

The Thirdest World: Stories and Essays by Three Filipino Writers

Insurrecto

Insurrecto

Insurrecto

The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

Bibliolepsy

Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, The