with a preface by Nick Joaquín
Philippine National Hero José Rizal’s grandniece Asunción López Bantug writes the vivid life story of the First Filipino as culled from family lore and personal anecdotes.
This biography enables us to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and prodigiously talented boy became the national hero of the Philippines in an epoch of great suffering and danger.
Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 historical photos and reproductions, the book also includes the complete bibliography of Rizal’s visual, literary, and political works, an illustrated chronology of his life, and the Rizal family’s remarkable genealogical chart tracing their Chinese ancestry from the early seventeenth century all the way through five generations of descendants. The collector’s hardcover edition is accompanied by Codex Rizal, a CD-ROM containing the full text of Rizal’s novels and selected works; landmark biographies by Wenceslao Retana, Austin Craig, and Rafael Palma; Teodoro Kalaw’s pioneering compilation of Rizal’s correspondence in Spanish; and over 200 photographs and illustrations. This special deluxe edition features gilt and rounded edge pages and leather quarter binding.
Mrs. Bantug has long been an invaluable source for Rizal researchers and biographers. . . . Even the now all too familiar events of the Rizal story take on new color and suspense . . . Again and again in Mrs. Bantug’s book we get this excited feeling that we are seeing Rizal plain. The national monument has become flesh and blood.
—Nick Joaquín, National Artist for Literature
© 2008
254 pages
softbound