Novel
The Preying Birds
Mga Ibong Mandaragit
Amado V. Hernandez · 1969
Synopsis
In September 1944, at the end of the Japanese occupation, Mando Plaridel, a former servant of the Monteros turned guerrilla, takes refuge in the Sierra Madre with Tata Matyas, an old revolutionary. Thanks to a map, he finds at the bottom of the sea the treasure of Simoun, the hero of Rizal's El Filibusterismo. After the war, this fortune allows him to found a newspaper, Kampilan, and a university, and he takes the side of the tenant farmers oppressed by the family of Don Segundo Montero.
Context
Written first in prison, the novel appeared in 1969, with a preface by Carlos P. Romulo. It takes up Simoun's chest of jewels to extend Rizal's two novels, and depicts the persistence of the power of the big landowners, the judges and the clergy after independence. It is regarded as the first Philippine socio-political novel. Danton Remoto translated it into English in 2022 under the title The Preying Birds; it has also been translated into Russian, but not into French.
Who it is for
To read the great committed novel of Tagalog literature, about the tenant farmers and the powerful of the post-war years.
Prizes and reception
For its translator, Danton Remoto, it is a classic of modern Philippine literature, studied in the country's schools.