One of the Philippine Daily Inquirer 's Top 10 Books of 2014 A NewPages Book Stand Editor's Pick "Darkly spellbinding...With a keen eye for splendor amid the grotesque, Gamalinda writes with a poet's heart and a philosopher's mind, while enthralling readers with emotional, gritty storytelling." — Booklist "A mesmerizing story full of mystery...intricate...beautiful writing." — Publishers Weekly "It's Gamalinda's best and most accessible novel yet, deserving to be read by as many people as possible." — Philippine Daily Inquirer "It felt so easy to get swept up in this novel. The language is beautiful....a beautifully written book." — NewPages "The wait for Gamalinda's first US based publication was well worth [it]...An indispensable, powerful portrayal of broken families trapped in the centripetal forces of transnational capital and postcolonial politics." — Asian American Literature Fans "Gamalinda...does indeed write fearlessly...in rich, unflinching prose. This storytelling stayed with me...I was compelled to keep reading by the strength of the writing (it's not for nothing that Gamalinda is the recipient of the Philippine National Book Award, a Palanca Memorial Award, and a Philippine Centennial Prize)." — Galatea Ressurects #24 "I recommend this book to those with large, giving hearts, who can afford to spend the emotional capital demanded here." — Basso Profundo " The Descartes Highlands is a psychologically taut drama that unravels right in front of you...I guarantee that you will be richly rewarded." — Zachary Mule "Behind Eric Gamalinda's jagged, ice-pick prose is an urgent need to connect and to understand. Are we more than the sum of our histories? What is this accident of being? Why is there anything at all? Written at the edge of a sinkhole and determined to resist its pull, The Descartes Highlands is about nothing less than the whole bewildering dream that is human consciousness." — David Hollander, author of L.I.E. "No one writes like Eric Gamalinda, though we wish we all could. The Descartes Highlands, an amazing work of brutal candor girded by a philosopher's calm, entwines our present despair with the horrific pasts we will not escape. One of the most dazzling novelists writing in America today, Eric Gamalinda has an almost classical Greek faith in the redemptive power of art. This novel delivers a commitment to beauty as unflinching as the bleak truths it tells—about globalization, about colonialism, about our human madness—offering in turn what seems our only, paradoxical the pained telling of our story—a gorgeous and bitter feast." — Gina Apostol, author of Gun Dealers' Daughter Two men, each unaware of the other, share a common family they were sold for adoption by their American father shortly after their births in the Philippines. Three alternating stories interweave the experiences of father Andrew Breszky and the two sons who try to connect and piece together the puzzle of their reckless, impulsive father. One lives in New York and the other grows up in the south of France, later traveling all over Asia as a documentary filmmaker. Both will discover that their relationships somehow echo that of the young man whose history eludes them. Celebrated Filipino writer Eric Gamalinda's international debut novel is a contemporary work of ideas that combines mystery, film noir, and existential philosophy. Highly intricate and written in a style reminiscent of the maverick narrative techniques of such filmmakers as Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr, and with some of the philosophical underpinnings of Michel Houellebecq or Javier Marías. Named after the region of the moon where Apollo 16 landed in the same year these men were born, The Descartes Highlands demonstrates that for lives marked by unrelieved loneliness, the only hope lies in the redemptive power of love.
Author
Eric T. Gamalinda is a poet, a fictionist and an essayist. He took undergraduate courses at the UST for three years and the UP for a semester. He was a local fellow for poetry of the UP ICW in 1983. In 1990, he went to Great Britain to represent the Philippines in the Cambridge International Writers’ Conference and to attend the Hawthornden International Writers’ Retreat in Scotland, 1991. he got a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy. He participated in the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s Programme for the 21st century. He currently works with the Center for Investigative Journalism. Gamalinda’s poems are collected in Fire Poem/Rain Poem (1976) and Lyrics From a Dead Language (1991). His stories have been gathered in Peripheral Vision (1992). His first novel, Planet Waves (1989), was set during the turbulent Martial Law era. A second novel, Confessions of a Volcano (1990), was written after a visit to Japan, and explores the differences between Filipino and Japanese consciousness. A third novel, The Empire of Memory (1992), is set against the momentous events before, during, and after the EDSA revolt. Two of Gamalinda’s poetry collections won prizes in the Palanca. Ara Vos Prec won in 1985, while Patria y Muerte won in 1988. He also won Palanca awards for: Anatomy of a Passionate Derangement, a one-act play in 1980, "Mourning and Weeping in this Valley of Tears," a short story in 1988, and "The Unbearable Lightness of EDSA," an essay in 1990. His novel, Planet Waves received the National Book Award for fiction from the Manila Critics Circle in 1989. (Source here.)
