US/EN
I Was the President's Mistress!!
Miguel Syjuco
(Author)
Description
"Brilliant . . . Miguel Syjuco is his country's most original and unflinching literary voice." --Salman Rushdie
It's a rare novel that leaves you reeling simultaneously with admiration, exhaustion, amazement at its author's reach and skill, and desolation at the world it spreads out before you . . . [A] raging protest of a book." --James Lasdun, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) From Miguel Syjuco, the winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize for Ilustrado, I Was the President's Mistress!! is an unflinching satire about power, corruption, sex, and all the other topics you were told never to discuss in polite company. First came the Sexy-Sexygate scandal. Then an impeachment trial. Finally, a battle royale for the presidency. At the center of this political typhoon is Vita Nova, the most famous movie star in the Philippines and a former paramour of the country's most powerful man. Now, for the first time ever, she bares herself completely in a tell-all memoir that puts the sensational in sensationalistic. The setting: a sweating, heaving country. The time: right now. The plot: a drug war rages, an assassin brandishes a pistol, a damsel rises from ashes to power, and a government teeters on the brink. Among the players: a dreamer who boxed and acted his way to the presidency, his Koran-toting nemesis in the senate, a horny bishop, a cowboy turned warlord, a poor little rich boy dying with his dynasty, a washed-up reporter redeemed by one last scoop, a high-school sweetheart driven mad by decades of disappointment, and an American naval officer tempting our heroine with a way out. As Vita warns, viewer discretion is advised. In this masterful and audacious novel, Miguel Syjuco's signature style--hilarious, insightful, playful, provocative--animates thirteen indelible voices whose stories present a cross-section of a complicated society. I Was the President's Mistress!! hurtles headlong into love, politics, faith, history, memory, and the ongoing war over who will tell the stories the world shall know as truth.Product Details
Price
$30.00
$27.90
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publish Date
April 05, 2022
Pages
384
Dimensions
5.98 X 8.9 X 1.42 inches | 1.3 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780374174057
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About the Author
Miguel Syjuco is a Filipino author, journalist, civil society advocate, and professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. His debut novel, Ilustrado, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won both the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Grand Prize at the Palanca Awards, his country's top literary honor. He has worked as a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times, written for many of the world's most respected publications, and spoken on Philippine politics and culture at the World Forum for Democracy and the World Economic Forum. He currently serves on the advisory councils of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, an international arts residency program, and the Resilience Fund, a project by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime to empower communities most threatened by criminality.
Reviews
"Effervescently entertaining . . . A dizzying parody of contemporary Pinoy political history . . . Miguel Syjuco's grand effort in rendering our country large if specific, not only to the latticework of libido and politics, deserves universal reckoning." --Alfred A. Yuson, The Philippine Star
"A fine romp . . . The joy is in the writing, lush and complex, structured in the manner of a mille crepe cake: top layer, the hijinks; slice deeper and taste the vicissitudes and outrages of Philippine society . . . What makes the book a worthwhile read are the serious discourses that show its point is to skewer the powerful and mighty and shake the sleepers awake." --Jenny Ortuoste, Manila Standard "[I Was the President's Mistress!!] has a headlong, assertive energy and a transgressive bent . . . Syjuco's most irreverent set pieces reveal how cultures can get a woman like Vita exactly backward--rather than the know-nothing sinner she's dismissed as, she's the scapegoat for everyone else's greed and ineptitude . . . Ingenious." --Kirkus Rambunctious, uninhibited satire . . . Those willing to go along for a wild ride ought to be entertained by this tale of dirty tricks and dirty deeds. --Publishers Weekly "This brilliant black comedy is a wild, and wildly unpredictable, ride through the dark side of the Philippines. Miguel Syjuco is his country's most original and unflinching literary voice." --Salman Rushdie, author of Quichotte A super-typhoon of a novel. A Babel of rogues, survivors and shape-shifters. A polemic against corruption and greed. A sassy, swerving mini-series, touched by grace and beauty. A Filipino Bonfire of the Vanities for our beleaguered times. An uncompromising work of art. --David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue "A tour de force--bawdy, fearless, insightful, delightful." --Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire "An urgent book, and a necessary one: a Tyrants Destroyed for the twenty-first century." --Tom McCarthy, author of The Making of Incarnation "Nobody writes like Miguel Syjuco. A triumph." --Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot I Was the President's Mistress!! is a tour de force. Virtuosic, kinetically funny Miguel Syjuco can riff on just about anything--from celebrity gossip to Internet troll farms, pop music to the Philippine electoral circus--as he explores our era's thorniest questions of class, gender, power, and violence. At the heart of this blistering satire is Vita Nova, a heroine for the ages, whose rise to fame and epic romantic odyssey stop the breath and stoke the conscience like nothing else I've ever read. --Mia Alvar, author of In the Country
