Agueda

About this book

"Way back in the Fifties when I was editing the Sunday magazine of the old Manila Times, a precocious and pretty teenager named Bambi Lamoglia gave me a stunning short story. Since then, I have kept track of its ubiquitous author and on those social occasions that I saw her, I always reminded her of the early promise, that the story should be followed by a much longer work. At long last, it is here, AGUEDA, a masterful re-creation of a city long vanished, its high and low life, the finely nuanced passage of a history is lived, the revolution of 1896 and on to those languorous years of the American Occupation, the imminent World War II darkening the horizon. Here, too, is the complex sharping of nationhood, romance, travel and towering above all these, the delicious narrative of a woman's emergence into modernity. For me to reveal the plot of this beautifully unfurled story is to deny the reader the giddy pleasure of discovery. It is enough to state here that Anna Maria L. Harper's fabulous AGUEDA has joined that precious gallergy of the most distinctive women characters in our literature. Bambi's exquisite evocation of time and place rivals Nick Joaquin's. Upon readin this most impressive first novel, I can imagine Nick hollering, "Bambi dahling--you're da best." -- F.Sionil Jose National Artist for Literature