The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata upends historical and literary convention in a polyphonic whirlwind of voices

Available for the first time outside of the Philippines, Gina Apostol's riotous second novel takes the form of a memoir by one Raymundo Mata, a half-blind bookworm and revolutionary, tracing his childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of writer and fellow revolutionary, Jose Rizal. Mata's 19th-century story is de-centered 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).

In telling the contested and fragmentary story of Mata, Apostol finds new ways to depict the violence of the Spanish colonial era, and to reimagine the nation's great writer, Jose Rizal, who was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities, and is considered by many to be the father of Philippine independence.

Brilliantly revised and expanded by the author for this edition-an act of re-creation in perfect keeping with the book's own textual preoccupations-these pages offer an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction, uncovering lost histories while building dazzling, anarchic modes of narrative.