With "Dusk" (originally published in the Philippines as "Po-on"), F.
Sionil Jose begins his five-novel 'Rosales Saga'. Set in the 1880s,
"Dusk" records the exile of a tenant family from its village and the new
life it attempts to make in the small town of Rosales. Here commences
the epic tale of a family unwillingly thrown into the turmoil of
history. But this is more than a historical novel; it is also the
eternal story of man's tortured search for true faith and the larger
meaning of existence. Jose carefully begins to paint a portrait of his
country, showing the terrible physical and emotional hardships the
people endure as the Philippines is transformed by the "liberation" from
Spanish rule and by the oppression that continues, even as the Americans
take over. Still, far from drawing a picture of hopelessness, Jose has
achieved a fiction of extraordinary scope and passion, a book as
meaningful to Philippine literature as "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
is to Latin American literature.