Po-on

With the publication of this novel, F. Sionil Jose completes his major work--the Rosales saga. PO-ON starts it all. Set in Ilokos in the 1880's, it records the flight of a tenant family from its village to the plains of eastern Pangasinan. But more than a story of escape from Spanish tyranny, it is also one man's tortured search for true faith and the larger meaning of his own existence, a search which propels him across the wilderness to the plain, then back, to the hostile roof of the Ilokos in the Cordilleras. Here is the beginning of an epic story which courses through four other novels--TREE, MY BROTHER MY EXECUTIONER, THE PRETENDERS and culminates with MASS which the scholar-critic, Isagani Cruz considers as "one of the greatest Filipino novels of all time." Independent of each other, these five novels sweep through Philippine history, encompassing four generations--an achievment which the poet-critic Ricaredo Demetillo recognizes as "the first great Filipino novels written in English--the most impressive legacy of any writer to philippine culture.