Kupitero's Keep Book Review Page

Kupitero's Keep Book Review

Book: MANILA, My Manila

Author: Nick Joaquin

Publisher: The Bookmark, Inc- 1999

Address: 264-A. Pablo Ocampo Sr. Ave, Makati City, Metro-Manila, Philippines

email: bookmark@info.com.ph

Info: 365 pages, hardbound, with illustrations by

artist Bert Gallardo, priced about $16.

If you're planning a trip to Manila, this is a must read. Part history, part geography and part travel book, MANILA, My Manila is easy to digest and will enable the prospective visitor to understand its ethnic diversity as well as the reasons why the place seems to be in a perpetual state of chaos.

This book might as well accentuate the city's driving points to be the rightful capital, as neighboring Quezon City -namesake for the country's president under the Commonwealth period- knocks on legislative doors to replace it.

The author is a national artist and needs no further introduction. Being a true-blue Manileño himself, he was able to write with incisive authority about the city so dear to his heart. The result was a gem that throbbed and radiated as the author deftly guided the reader around every nook and corner of the city. And, like a nostalgic "jeepney" driver with his pen, he was able to evoke in the reader's heart, the 'deja-vu' as he tried to visualize the halcyon days of a place that, ironically, seems to be in a state of decay today in its march towards modernization.

MANILA, My Manila, like the sturdy nilad tree the city was named after, will stay in the memory of the reader even after its author will be long gone.

- Kupitero

note: This review was written originally by this web author in 1999. Nick Joaquin peacefully died in his San Juan, Manila home in April 29, 2004. He was 86 yrs old.

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