“The foremost Filipino novelist in English, his novels deserve a much wider readership than the Philippines can offer. His major work, the Rosales Saga, can be read as an allegory for the Filipino in search of an identity.”
—IAN BURUMA, The New York Review of Books
“America has no counterpart … no one who is simultaneously a prolific novelist, a social and political organizer, an editor and journalist, and a small-scale entrepreneur.… As a writer, José is famous for two bodies of work. One is the Rosales sequence, a set of five novels published over a twenty-year span which has become a kind of national saga.… José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, published in Spanish (despite its Latin title) in the late nineteenth century, was an influential Uncle Tom’s Cabin-style polemic about Spanish rule. The Rosales books are a more literarily satisfying modern equivalent.”
—JAMES FALLOWS, The Atlantic
“One of the [Philippines’] most distinguished men of letters.”
—Time
“Marvelous.”
—PETER BACHO, The Christian Science Monitor
“[José] never flattens his characters in the service of rhetoric.… Even more impressive is José’s ability to tell important stories in lucid, but never merely simple prose.… It’s refreshing to see a politically engaged writer who dares to reach for a broader audience.”
—LAURA MILLER, San Francisco Weekly
“Tolstoy himself, not to mention Italo Svevo, would envy the author of this story.… This short … scorching work whets our appetite for Sionil José’s masterpiece, the five-novel Rosales Saga.”
—JOSEPH COATES, Chicago Tribune
“The literary work of José is inseparable from the modern politics and history of the Philippines.”
—Le Monde
“José’s writing is simple and direct, appearing deceptively unsophisticated at times. But the stories ring true, and taken together, they provide a compelling picture of the difficulties of modern life and love in this beleaguered island nation.”
—STEVE HEILIG, San Francisco Chronicle
“[José] is the only writer who has produced a series of novels that constitutes an epic imaginative creation of a century of Philippine life … a rich, composite picture.”
—LEOPOLDO Y. YABES, Contemporary Novelists
“[José is] one of the best and most active writers of contemporary Philippine literature in English … [H]is stories are moving portraits of Philippine society.”
—JOSEPH A. GALDON, S.J., Philippine Studies
“In Filipino literature in recent years, the creative work of Francisco Sionil José occupies a special place.… José is a great artist.”
—IGOR PODBEREZSKY, Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow
“The reader of this slim volume of well-crafted stories will learn more about the Philippines, its people, and its concerns than from any journalistic account or from a holiday trip there. José’s book takes us to the heart of the Filipino mind and soul, to the strengths and weaknesses of its men, women, and culture.”
—LYNNE BUNDESEN, Los Angeles Times
“Sionil José has the ability to write evocatively … his descriptions of the rural environment have an intense glow and a lyrical shine … truly an emancipated stylist, an interpreter of character and analyst of society.”
—ARTHUR LUNDKVIST, The Swedish Academy, Stockholm
“[José is] an outstanding saga writer. If ever a Nobel Prize in literature will be awarded to a Southeast Asian writer, it will be to F. Sionil José.”
—The Mainichi Shimbun (Tokyo)
“Considered by many to be Asia’s most likely candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature.”
—The Singapore Straits Times
“F. Sionil José could become the first Filipino to win the Nobel Prize for literature … he’s a fine writer and would be welcome recognition of cultural achievement in his troubled country. [He] is widely known and acclaimed in Asia.”
—JOHN GRIFFIN, The Honolulu Advertiser
“[José] captures the spirit of his country’s sullen and corrupt bureaucracy [and] tells the readers far more about Philippine society than many, far lengthier works of nonfiction.”
—STEVE VINES, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
“The plot [of Ermita] is unfolded by concise, vividly picturesque, sometimes humorous, often tender prose. The candor with which Sionil fleshes out his sensuous earthy characters is balanced by his breathtakingly surgical dissection of their minds and souls.”
—NINA ESTRADA, Lifestyle Asia
“José is one of Asia’s most eminent writers and novelists. His passionate, sometimes transcendent writings illuminate contemporary Filipino life in graceful and historically anchored narratives of power brokers and the brokered, of landowners and the indentured.”
—SCOTT RUTHERFORD, Islands Magazine
“He has achieved a unity in his writings such as that seen in William Faulkner in his stories relating to Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi or in the Monterey stories of John Steinbeck.”
—DOUGLAS LECROY, St. Louis University Research Journal