But for the Lovers by Wilfrido D. Nolledo

In But for the Lovers, Hidalgo de Anuncio, a jaded Spanish vaudevillian brings home to Ojos Verdes a girl lost in the streets of Japanese-occupied Manila. With his attendant Molave Amoran—wistful guitarist and thief—the payaso guides his lost crew through the startling grotesqueries and tragedies inside a devastated Manila. Literary critic and writer Caroline Hau describes the book as a “comic but fraught allegory of Spanish, American, and Japanese imperial contest over the Filipino ‘alma’ (soul).”

 REVIEWS

“Exploding Galaxies’ Philippine edition marks the triumphant, albeit posthumous, return of this prodigiously gifted native who has given his name to a vital period of literary experimentation and political ferment in the 1960s and continues to inspire generations of writers, Filipino and otherwise.”— Caroline Hau

“The book is a marvel. It cuts no corners. It knows its purpose. Like the best of our Filipino novels, like Noli Me Tangere, it is sui generis: it comes seemingly from nowhere to speak an experience of trauma unspeakably Filipino. It marks its ambition by its existence. And line after line, page after page, for me, it was also sheer fun— rereading it, every day I took the book up with an almost giddy, comforted pleasure— the comfort of reading a book that does exactly what its imagination requires and its truth demands.”— Gina Apostol

“Wilfrido Nolledo’s But For the Lovers… is a fearless—and fearsome—book, its author’s eyes wide open and imagination at full throttle, a genuine masterpiece…”— Robert Coover

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with French flaps
Publisher: Exploding Galaxies
ISBN: 978-6219675703
Pages: 476