Insurrecto

by Gina Apostol Narrated by Justine Eyre

Overview

Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip in Duterte's Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created "a howling wilderness" of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara's film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator-one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher.



Insurrecto masterfully questions and twists narrative in the manner of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch, and Nabokov's Pale Fire. But at its heart this is a novel of emotional power that grapples with our endless ability to erase the past. Apostol pushes up against the limits of fiction in order to recover the atrocity in Balangiga, and in so doing, she shows us the dark heart of an untold and forgotten war that would shape the next century of Philippine and American history.

Editorial Reviews

DECEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

Listeners may not have heard of the 1901 Balangiga massacre in the Philippines. That’s all the more reason we need Justine Eyre's strong performance in this reimagining of the conflict between the townspeople and American soldiers. Eyre creates smooth transitions between the perspectives of American filmmaker Chiara and Filipino translator Magsalin. Each of the women writes a screenplay about this bloody historical moment, one focused on soldiers, the other about townspeople. Eyre captures both high-minded Chiara, whose ethnocentric screenplay tells only one side of the story, and tentative Magsalin, whose confidence develops over time. Listeners can be very sure whose part of the story they are in throughout. Together, the narrators bring us the full picture of this dark episode in history. M.R. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Jen McDonald

Humor, Mark Twain said, is tragedy plus time. Surely no better line exists to explain Gina Apostol's brilliant new novel…a book haunted by a real episode of horrific wartime violence that is, nevertheless, relentlessly funny…To most Americans, Apostol notes, Balangiga is a little-known chapter in an "unremembered" war. In Insurrecto, she exhumes this episode to conduct a ferocious, censorious and, yes, comic assault on received ideas about history and heroism, art and exploitation, and the ethics of narrative…Apostol has not only shredded the map and cast it out the window, she has taken a grenade to the road and charted in its place a mind-bending, blazingly satirical course into a Philippines traumatized and forever altered by American arrogance and aggression. It's a bravura performance…Apostol is a magician with language (think Borges, think Nabokov) who can swing from slang and mockery to the stodgy argot of critical theory. She puns with gusto, potently and unabashedly, until one begins reading double meanings, allusions and ulterior motives into everything.

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/03/2018
Apostol (Gun Dealer’s Daughter) fearlessly probes the long shadow of forgotten American imperialism in the Philippines in her ingenious novel of competing filmmakers. Chiara Brasi, daughter of the director of The Unintended, a Vietnam War movie shot in the Philippines, comes to Manila to make her own film. She hires Magsalin, a translator, to take her to the Philippine island of Samar (near where Magsalin was born) and the town of Balangiga, site of a brutal American massacre of revolutionaries in 1901 during the Philippine-American War. Chiara and Magsalin craft two very different scripts for the film. One script focuses on Cassandra Chase, a well-connected photographer who travels to the Philippines to produce stereographs of the American military’s actions. She faces extreme hostility from the soldiers, including the inexperienced and devoutly Catholic Capt. Thomas Connell. The second script more elusively follows Caz, a Filipino school teacher, who mourns the death of an eccentric film director she had an affair with in the 1970s. This is a complex and aptly vertiginous novel that deconstructs how humans tell stories and decide which versions of events are remembered; names repeat between scripts, and directors suddenly interrupt what feels like historical narration. Apostol’s layers of narrative, pop culture references, and blurring of history and fiction make for a profound and unforgettable journey into the past and present of the Philippines. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award
BuzzFeed's Best Fiction of 2018
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Book of 2018
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Best Book of 2018
The Millions Most Anticipated Fall Books of 2018
BookRiot's Best Books of November 2018

Praise for Insurrecto

“A bravura performance in which war becomes farce, history becomes burlesque . . . Apostol is a magician with language (think Borges, think Nabokov) who can swing from slang and mockery to the stodgy argot of critical theory. She puns with gusto, potently and unabashedly, until one begins reading double meanings, allusions and ulterior motives into everything.”
—The New York Times 

“Apostol is no mystifier or arid avant-gardiste. Rather, she's playful like Italo Calvino or Kurt Vonnegut. She dishes up funny riffs on everything from the 'Thrilla in Manila' and her countrymen's love of Elvis Presley to what the book terms the Filipino Chekhov Rule: If you mention karaoke in the first chapter, somebody has to sing it in the last one . . . It's Insurrecto's great achievement that it confronts us with dreadful things without ever turning into an accusatory, anti-American screed. See, Apostol is after more than recrimination. Steeped in the love-hate relationship with American culture she shares with most Filipinos, she actually seeks to transcend the gap between the two countries.”
—John Powers, NPR's Fresh Air

“Stunning . . . An arresting novel with a timely political message, Apostol’s Insurrecto dazzles with its inventive structure and superb portrayals of women as leaders of ingenuity, creativity and reason.”
—Los Angeles Times  

“[Insurrecto] begins in the present, when a Filipina writer and translator, Magsalin, agrees to help a stylish, young Sofia Coppola-esque American director, Chiara, who is making a film about a forgotten 1901 atrocity in which American occupiers retaliated against a Filipino uprising. After Magsalin reads Chiara’s script, she writes one of her own, and soon we’re reading two competing versions of historical events — one from the perspective of a white American socialite photographer, the other from the point of view of a Filipina schoolteacher. In the end, both Magsalin and Chiara believe they have failed in telling a true account of the event—but Apostol has not.”
—T Magazine

“Wickedly funny . . . Ferocious in its political indignation . . . Pick one of the many figures offered by the novel itself: a palimpsest, a translation, a stereoscope, an abaca weave. Insurrecto is all of these things—a polyphonic work that challenges the reader to keep up with its plotting and to think with or against or through its complex moral reckonings.”
—The Boston Globe

“A risk-taking, cinematic look at Duterte’s Philippines and the 1901 Balangiga massacre during the Philippine-American war . . . Apostol uses techniques from Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, expecting the reader to trust her as the story hopscotches through time and space. But for readers accustomed to the jump-cuts and montages of cinema, Insurrecto doesn’t present a challenge so much as a cascade of pleasures and possibilities.”
—The Financial Times  

“Gina Apostol—a smart writer, a sharp critic, a keen intellectual—takes on the vexed relationship between the Philippines and the United States, pivoting on that relationship’s bloody origins. Insurrecto is meta-fictional, meta-cinematic, even meta-meta, plunging us into the vortex of memory, history, and war where we can feel what it means to be forgotten, and what it takes to be remembered.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer

“Dazzling . . . A tender character study erupting with blazing insights on the ethics of storytelling.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Gina Apostol uses an array of literary and cinematic techniques: memoirs, jump cuts, close-ups, and reveries to set a story in Duterte’s Philippines that shows us that though victors often write histories, survivors and artists can revise them.”
—NPR's Weekend Edition

“Apostol is preoccupied by the ways that history is mediated—and inevitably distorted—by artists and journalists, whether through photography, films or books . . . Brain candy for the theory-minded.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Intricate, funny, hyper-literate.”
—CNN Philippines

“Undoubtedly a master.”
—Philippine Star

“An ambitious, cheeky, at times savagely brilliant, tour de force.”
—The Philippine Inquirer

“[A] sobering but humorous funhouse mirror . . . Elegant, wry, and brilliant.”
—Dallas Morning News  

“Magnificent.”
—BuzzFeed 

“Gina Apostol's novel combines pop culture references, fake movie scripts, road trip tropes, and character studies all in the effort of reexamining the United States' influence on the Philippines—and it works, man.”
—Refinery29, Best Books of November

“Insurrecto is a potent rebuttal . . . parsing the intersections of politics and art with the finer tools of humor, skepticism, and playful misdirection.”
—Jezebel

“It is novels like this that make me want to get down on my knees and weep with joy over the fact that such powerful, inventive fiction still exists . . . The narrative structure and writing of the novel are a continuous, beautiful punch in the gut. I loved, loved, loved this book.”
—BookRiot

“A book by Gina Apostol is always an event, and this latest one is no exception. Lush and vigorous, Insurrecto mines the Philippines' troubled past with a scholar's careful attention to detail and examines the enduring riddles of voice and identity, revolution and nation. The ghosts of history stalk the pages of this dizzying, stunning novel, their footsteps echoing in our fraught and uncertain times.”
—F.H. Batacan, author of Smaller and Smaller Circles

“Apostol fearlessly probes the long shadow of forgotten American imperialism in the Philippines in her ingenious novel of competing filmmakers . . . Layers of narrative, pop culture references, and blurring of history and fiction make for a profound and unforgettable journey into the past and present of the Philippines.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Shrewd . . . inventive . . . stinging . . . [Apostol] puts the "unremembered" Philippine-American War on display, deftly exposing a complicated colonial legacy through the unlikely relationship between a U.S.-educated Filipino translator and a visiting American filmmaker . . . Exceptionally rewarding.”
—Booklist, Starred Review 

“Dazzling, interlocking narratives on history, truth, and storytelling.”
—Kirkus Reviews 

“A searing and psychedelic road trip through the long, sordid history of Philippine-American relations, Insurrecto is at once a murder mystery, a war movie, and a moving exploration of all the ways grief lives on, both in a people and in a person.  A masterful puzzle, in which, as Apostol writes, ‘one story told may unbury another.’”
—Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not the Heart

“In Insurrecto, a polymath's lyricism is woven with sharp cultural study and post-colonial tristesse. A deft and labyrinthine depiction of our helpless condition of ever-revolving insurrection, Gina Apostol has created an elegant mise en abyme wherein the colonizer and the colonized reflect themselves over and over and yet over again.”
—Eugene Lim, author of Dear Cyborgs

“Insurrecto is an intricate fever dream of a novel. Gina Apostol’s sublime intellect, razor-sharp humor, and fierce moral conviction shine a powerful light on the Philippines’ violent history and present-day traumas. Through wildly inventive prose and richly layered plots, this book will provoke, unsettle, and ultimately transform the ways we read and remember the past.”
—Mia Alvar, author of In the Country

“Dazzling.”
—The Complete Review

“A mesmeric pastiche, a cleverly hilarious indictment, a vicious, unapologetic tour-de-force: Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto is an astonishing literary masterpiece.”
—Bookreporter.com

“Brilliant . . . [A] heady mix of highbrow and lowbrow references and Vonnegut-like humor.”
—Kore Asian Media

“A fast, deceptively light read, with pop culture, literary, and film references that are sharp and funny. Yet, each reference contains layers of meaning and irony that become increasingly perceptible . . . Read it on a sunny day at the beach, but don’t be surprised if it enters your dreams. Insurrecto floats like a butterfly—but stings.”
—Public Seminar

“Apostol’s sharply drawn scenes and characters make a literary masterpiece that is at turns hilarious and heartbreaking, and always compulsively readable.”
—Arlington Public Library (Arlington, VA)

Praise for Gina Apostol
 
“[Apostol] weaves the complex tangle of Philppine history, literature, and languages (along with contemporary academic scholarship) into a brilliant tour de force of a novel.”
—John Barth, author of Lost in the Funhouse

“A daring, fever dream of a novel.”
—Alex Gilvarry, author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

“Brilliant . . . Apostol creates one of the most compelling characters in recent fiction.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“Probes the hard truths of love, nationhood and exile . . . Apostol is a fearless, stylish writer of substance.”
—Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters

“Apostol's writing is marked by a fierce intelligence, uncommonly delicious language, and a dark undercurrent of humor. As others have observed, she is a master of delineating the personal with the political, and how they are inextricably entwined. Also—and this is no small feat—she seems incapable of writing an unimpressive sentence.”
—Luis Katigbak, The Philippine Star 

Library Journal - Audio

Winter 2018

With its dizzying shifts of perspective, Apostol's (Gun Dealers' Daughter) latest novel has the feel of an experimental film or video art installation. Films and filmmaking are also at the center of the labyrinthine plot, which features Magsalin, a Filipino translator and mystery author, and Chiara, an American filmmaker. The story begins as Chiara enlists Magsalin's help on her script about the 1901 Balangiga Massacre. In 1898, the United States was met with resistance from the Philippines after it was acquired, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War. In retaliation for a Filipino revolutionary attack that killed 48 American soldiers, Gen. Jacob H. Smith, who was eventually court-martialed, ordered soldiers to kill everyone over the age of ten and turn the countryside into a "howling wilderness." Like American and Filipino historians who have provided conflicting accounts of the massacre, Chiara and Magsalin's personal histories influence the way they think the movie script should represent and interpret the historical event. With its dense, carefully crafted prose and complicated narrative structure (the chapters are not numbered sequentially), this requires careful attention. VERDICT Veteran narrator Justine Eyre gamely and enjoyably relates the vignettes, but only the most diligent listeners and serious experimental fiction fans will have the patience to piece together the hopscotching, though ultimately rewarding, narrative. ["Worthy of a place in collections strong in postcolonial and experimental fiction": LJ 10/15/18 review of the Soho hc.]—Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib.

DECEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

Listeners may not have heard of the 1901 Balangiga massacre in the Philippines. That’s all the more reason we need Justine Eyre's strong performance in this reimagining of the conflict between the townspeople and American soldiers. Eyre creates smooth transitions between the perspectives of American filmmaker Chiara and Filipino translator Magsalin. Each of the women writes a screenplay about this bloody historical moment, one focused on soldiers, the other about townspeople. Eyre captures both high-minded Chiara, whose ethnocentric screenplay tells only one side of the story, and tentative Magsalin, whose confidence develops over time. Listeners can be very sure whose part of the story they are in throughout. Together, the narrators bring us the full picture of this dark episode in history. M.R. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-08-21

Demanding, baffling, and ultimately exhilarating examination of a forgotten moment in U.S.-Philippine history.

Cinematic in its approach, Apostol's (Gun Dealer's Daughter, 2012, etc.) fourth book alternates between aerial shots, jump-cuts, and close-ups, moving backward and forward in time to get at a story of U.S.-Philippine relations by way of history, literature, language, and scholarship. It even opens with a six-page Cast of Characters, some historical, many from pop culture, a few fictional. While at first the book seems gonzo in its approach, the result is a portrait (though incomplete) of Casiana Nacionales, the insurrecto for whom the book is named, a woman whom "history barely knows." Nacionales was the only woman who actively participated in a rebellion against U.S. servicemen in 1901 after a period of occupation marked by cruelty on one end and breathtaking abandonment on the other. To be clear: The book is not explicitly about Nacionales. Her appearance, like an image emerging on film, serves as a metaphor for how the truth of history is repressed until something or someone brings it into the light. To anchor the novel, Apostol uses two characters: Magsalin, a Filipino writer/translator, and Chiara, a U.S. filmmaker. Their contrasting approaches and accounts of the rebellion ultimately get to what Magsalin and Chiara believe they failed at, of telling "a story of war and loss so repressed and so untold." Magsalin and Chiara may have failed, but Apostol did not. The U.S. may have "manufactured how to see the world," but it's the writers, artists, and other visionaries who speak outside the frame who can reveal the truth. The cast of characters and the out-of-order system of numbering chapters are best revisited after finishing the book.

Dazzling, interlocking narratives on history, truth, and storytelling.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170215072
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

For the mystery writer, it is not enough to mourn the dead. One must also study the exit wounds, invite the coroner to tea, cloud the mind with ulterior motives.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Insurrecto"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Gina Apostol.
Excerpted by permission of Soho Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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