Books like The feet of Juan Bacnang by F. Sionil José

José Rizal’s classic novel, *Noli Me Tangere*, depicts life in Spanish‑era Philippines, following young Ibarra as he confronts colonial injustice, societal decline, and the quest for education and freedom.

"Don Vicente contains two novels in F. Sionil Jose's classic Rosales Saga. The saga, begun in Jose's novel Dusk, traces the life of one family, and that of their rural town of Rosales, from the Philippine revolution against Spain through the arrival of the Americans to, ultimately, the Marcos dictatorship."--BOOK JACKET. "The first novel here, Tree, is told by the loving but uneasy son of a land overseer. It is the story of one young man's search for parental love and for his place in a society with rigid class structures. The tree of the title is a symbol of the hopes and dreams - too often dashed - of the Filipino people."--BOOK JACKET. "The second novel, My Brother, My Executioner, follows the misfortunes of two brothers, one the editor of a radical magazine who is tempted by the luxury of the city, the other an activist who is prepared to confront all of his enemies, real or imagined."--BOOK JACKET.

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.