F. Sionil José

In the episodes of Zakharka's life, the reader sees him as a little boy, a bitterly drinking grave-digger, a nightclub bouncer or a soldier in Chechnya. He has no money, but the ability to enjoy life. He is contagiously full of passion for living, taking large gulps of it while being happy, despite the crudeness of his reality.

With Dusk (originally published in the Philippines as Po-on), F. Sionil Jose begins his five-novel Rosales Saga. Set in the 1880s, Dusk records the exile of a tenant family from its village and the new life it attempts to make in the small town of Rosales. Here commences the epic tale of a family unwillingly thrown into the turmoil of history. But this is more than a historical novel; it is also the eternal story of man's tortured search for true faith and the larger meaning of existence. Jose carefully begins to paint a portrait of his country, showing the terrible physical and emotional hardships the people endure as the Philippines is transformed by the "liberation" from Spanish rule and by the oppression that continues, even as the Americans take over. Still, far from drawing a picture of hopelessness, Jose' has achieved a fiction of extraordinary scope and passion, a book as meaningful to Philippine literature as One Hundred Years of Solitude is to Latin American literature.

"With these two novels, The Pretenders and Mass, F. Sionil Jose concludes his epochal Rosales Saga. The five volumes span much of the turbulent modern history of the Philippines, a beautiful and embattled nation once occupied by the Spanish, overrun by the Japanese, and dominated by the United States. The portraits painted in The Samsons, and in the previously published Modern Library paperback editions of Dusk and Don Vicente (containing Tree and My Brother, My Executioner), are renderings of one family from the village of Rosales who contend with the forces of oppression and human nature.". "Antonio Samson of The Pretenders is ambitious, educated, and torn by conflicting ideas of revolution. He marries well, which leads to his eventual downfall. In Mass, Pepe Samson, the bastard son of Antonio, is also ambitious, but in different ways. He comes to Manila mainly to satisfy his appetites, and after adventures erotic and economic, finds his life taking a surprising turn. Together, these novels form a portrait of a village and a nation, and conclude one of the masterpieces of Southeast Asian literature."--BOOK JACKET.

The conflict in this novel about the Hukbalahap uprising the 1950s is not just the enmity in the guerilla war. It is the deeper symbolic conflict between two brothers and their vastly different and estranged worlds. Here, too, is the trauma of traditional society undergoing change, and the old refusing to let go. Don Vicente, the landlord who dominates Tree without appearing in it, appears in My Brother, My Executioner as the central figure, returning to his town to die. Luis is his illegitimate son on whom he pins his last hopes for an heir. Victor is Luis's half-brother - the rebel, unflinching but doomed.

In this clear, concise, and captivating book, renowned scientist, environmentalist and bestselling author David Suzuki tells the life story of a stately tree on the Pacific coast of North America.Lyrical and richly detailed, with stunning illustrations by Canadian artist Robert Bateman, Tree tells the life story of a single tree a majestic Douglas-fir on the Pacific coast of North America.The story begins with the release of a cloud of millions of microscopic grains of pollen that coat thousands of pine cones on neighbouring trees. One pollen grain fertilizes an egg cell to create a seed and that seed develops into the tree.We follow the tree's progress as it grows and discover what role the tree plays in the forest throughout its life - from its use a home to a succession of creatures to the crucial role it plays in the water cycle, from breaking rock down into soil to removing carbon dioxide from the air and producing oxygen. Even after it dies, the tree plays a crucial role in the forest with moss, ferns, and other plants using the tree as a nurse log, and its decaying wood providing nutrients for insects and fungi. Tree also looks at the community of organisms that share the tree's ecosystem and at the events going on in the larger world during the tree's lifetime.Tree pays tribute to a ubiquitous organism that is too often taken for granted but without which life would be impossible.1

..ITS ALL ABOUT THE FILIPINO FREEDOM

These novellas by the foremost writer of the Philippines are portraits of three women who, somewhat like the archipelago itself, are troubled, victimized, and beautiful. Here is the swirling cultural life and physical world of the twentieth-century Philippines, with its gulf between immense wealth and crushing poverty, humane social concerns and self-interest, political radicalism and police-state repression. Here, too, is the fiery sexuality that comes with love and the. Excitement of throwing off the bonds of the past. Narita, of "Cadena de Amor," a story cast as a documentary study of a Filipina politician, is driven by calculated opportunism to escape her poverty-stricken past and study and sleep her way to the country's senate. Ermita, of "Obsession," is elegant and lovely, but never able to escape her career as a highly selective and, in some ways, very private prostitute. Malu, of "Platinum," is a political idealist and activist. Under Marcos-imposed martial law. Her unwillingness to forgo her clandestine and mysterious activities on her regular days "off" from her marriage promises tragedy. Each woman captures a man who adores her as if possessed. Their stories, at once richly passionate and tragic, suggest both the varieties and similarities of women's experience in a country that has produced such strikingly different figures as Imelda Marcos and Corazon Aquino.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE? GAGAMBA, the cripple, sells sweepstakes tickets the whole day at the entrance to Camarin, the Ermita restaurant. He sees them all—the big men, politicians, journalists, generals, landlords, and the handsome call-girls who have made Camarin famous. In mid-July 1990, a killer earthquake struck and entombed all the beautiful people dining at the Camarin. Gagamba could have easily gotten killed—but he survived the earthquake, as do two other lucky people who were buried in the rubble. As told by the Philippines' most widely translated author, this novel raises a fundamental question about life's meaning and suggests at the same time the only rational answer.