Novel
Dusk
Po-on
F. Sionil José · 1984
Synopsis
In the 1880s, in the Ilocano village of Po-on, near Cabugaw, Istak, a peasant's son turned literate sacristan, must flee with his family after his father kills the new Spanish priest, in whom he had recognised the man who once mutilated him. With his wife Dalin and the families who follow them, he sets out on a long exodus to the south, through forests and mountains, to clear a free land in the Rosales plain.
Context
The novel was written last of the five in its series, but it occupies the first moment in it: its author thus went back to the origin of a family whose descendants he had already written. It was published in Manila by Solidaridad, the house he ran with his bookshop. It appeared in the United States fourteen years later under another title, from a New York publisher, which made the whole known outside the country; Fayard has published a French translation. It is written in English, the language of schooling since the American occupation.
Who it is for
A novel of medium length, the first volume in chronological order of a saga in five books. Each volume can be read separately.
Prizes and reception
First instalment, in chronological order, of the Rosales saga, whose novels the critic Ricaredo Demetillo regarded as the first great Philippine novels written in English.