Bibliolepsy

Moving, sexy, and archly funny, Gina Apostol's Philippine National Book Award-winning Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship

Gina Apostol's debut novel, available for the first time in the US, tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution.

It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors.

For Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable "Justice League" of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, "a vagabond from history, a runaway from time," can be saved by sex, love, and books.

Author: Gina Apostol
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 01/04/2022
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.60w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781641292511

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 08/01/2021 pg. 7
Publishers Weekly 10/25/2021
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2021
Shelf Awareness 01/14/2022
Booklist 01/01/2022 pg. 32

About the Author
Gina Apostol is the author of Insurrecto and the PEN Open Book Award-winner Gun Dealers' Daughter, as well as a two-time winner of the National Book Award in the Philippines for her novels Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies and journals including The Gettysburg Review and the Penguin anthology of Asian American fiction, Charlie Chan Is Dead, Volume 2.