Winner of the Man Asian Literacy Prize.

Crispin Salvador, lion of Philippine letters, is found dead in the Hudson River. His young acolyte, Miguel, sets out to investigate the author's suspicious death and the strange disappearance of an unfinished manuscript - a work that had been planned not just to return the once-great author to fame but to expose the corruption behind the rich families who have ruled the Philippines for generations. To understand the death, Miguel scours Salvador's life via his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns, stories, and epics: a family saga tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans, and the Filipinos themselves. But this story belongs to young Miguel as much as to his lost mentor, as he is treated to an unhindered view of a society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.