Timawa came out almost seventy years ago as A. C. Fabian’s first attempt at writing a novel. But the experiences explored—the evils of racism, the mesmerizing but invariably fatal power of the “American Dream,” the burden of being poor in a closed society, the insidious effects of war where a small country was caught in the battle among giants, the brutality and violence wrapping themselves up around us, the dogged resistance to change—still resonate in the contemporary world, multiplied a thousand times.

This book was a huge step in the development of the Tagalog novel by displaying its keen sense of tradition at the same time that it was fearless in constructing a protagonist, combining the qualities of both a heel and a hero, whose own quest was contextualized against the specificities of the historical moment.

Published in 2019.