Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café

Originally Published

1988

In his stillness Leon knew the charm entering him was a powerful one. He knew that on this night of the new moon he had been launched into the company of select spirits, who would one day assemble with their friends to drink Irish coffee in the Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café.

Pre-order now and get a copy signed by the author (Limited to first 100 orders only! Maximum of 2 copies per customer). Ships out September 10.

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Revolutionary hero Leon Kilat stars in this novel where time is collaged with myth and moviemaking. Meanwhile, Robert Aguinaldo writes the novel-within-the-novel in this landmark piece of metafiction.

Punctuated with irreverent mirth, the story unfolds when the banana heart charm drips into Leon’s giggling mouth and he is at once present and everywhere he will ever be. In between, Robert parses historical research for his grant-awarded novel.

The Jungle Café is rest stop and watering hole to the likes of José Rizal & Rimbaud & Ishmael Bernal & Sandra Dee & Maurice Arcache & Billy Ray Bates. Leon Kilat is not a regular just yet—he first has to be the bandit, the Singer salesman, the baker’s apprentice, and the revolucionario before he can wine and dine and gossip and guffaw with the old gang and Robert Aguinaldo at the Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café, dazed though he might be.

First published in 1988, Alfred A. Yuson’s first novel, Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café is a “tour de force,” a “magnificent novel,” a playful flex of wit, music, and ingenuity.

Format: Paperback
Dimensions: 271 pages, 130mm x 180mm x 20mm
ISBN: 978-621-8535-00-8

Preface by the author

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"The achievement of this book lies not so much in the enormous creative vitality of the author as in his capacity to work within and against a convention, exercising aesthetic options in a particular historical and cultural milieu. . . Certainly it is the kind of fiction that renews our faith in the ultimacies of man's imagination."

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Ophelia Dimalanta

"This rollicking, ribald, boisterous, fantastical narrative is how Yuson imagines the Philippines—a surrealistic land, where the most unlikely people are catapulted into positions which demand no less than absolutely heroic behavior, where the unpredictable is the rule, and survival depends on the wildness of one's imagination and one's sense of humor."

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Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo

"This novel is fiction, yes, but it destroys the walls and ceilings set up by realism, and frees the Filipino imagination to soar on its own."

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Danton Remoto

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Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café

Pre-order now and get a copy signed by the author (Limited to first 100 orders only! Maximum of 2 copies per customer). Ships out September 10.

Further Materials