Bibliolepsy
Soho Press 2022
University of the Philippines Press 1997
Winner of 1997 Philippine National Book Award
“This audacious first novel”—The New York Times
New Yorker’s 2022 Best Books So Far
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Primi Peregrino is a girl on a mission: she hunts for books and writers even as her country is falling to pieces. She prefers sex to rebellion and words to war as the EDSA rebellion of 1986 magically and unexpectedly unravels. Going through a diary of poets, from Sabado Gloria to Viernes Santo, she falls prey to her own delusions but remains true to her fantasy: that books will make her whole.
Publishers’ Weekly on Bibliolepsy
“Extraordinary…Apostol’s language is a constant delight, frank and full of felicitous turns of phrase and abundant humor. Layered and fully realized, it’s deserving of several readings.”
The New Yorker on Bibliolepsy
“…this hypnotic coming-of-age novel...”
IndieNext on Bibliolepsy:
“A book lover’s dream filled with hilarity, poetry, and rampant bibliophilia — or, as she calls it, bibliolepsy.”
—Jeff Sjerven, Left Bank Books, St. Louis, MO
San Francisco Book Review on Bibliolepsy
“Those familiar with other works such as Insurrecto will find glimpses of the master to come—how her experimentation in terms of form and narrative are in Primi’s fragmented narration…The novel delineates then steps over the lines between fiction and reality, with Primi believing ‘in a grace much deeper than vulgar empathy, tenuous as redemption.’ ”
Danton Remoto on Bibliolepsy:
Other people write tomes that would be better off as doorstops. In 160 pages, Gina Apostol serves up Manila in the Eighties, swift, Swiftian, sexy, and sad.
Luis Katigbak on Bibliolepsy:
Bibliolepsy, despite all the couplings and uncouplings, is not a love story, or at least not a typical love story involving a man or a woman. It is, as the title implies, about an obsessive, overpowering love of books...For those of us who have gotten down on our hands and knees to thoroughly search bargain book bins...we will find our fervor echoed in the character of pale, biblioleptic Primi, and find Bibliolepsy a dizzyingly eloquent, slightly disturbing, but ultimately strangely comforting read.