Eyes of Saint Lucia
E-book, Czech
Eyes of Saint Lucia
A unique insight into Filipino culture from an award-winning poet and prose writer
Three short stories by Filipino author Kristian Cordero capture the dark atmosphere of a post-colonial society where old rural traditions and customs, ancient myths, and folk belief in the magical power of Christian saints clash with the pressures of the modern world, rampant urbanisation, and militarisation. The bloody backdrop to his sketches is the constant violent conflict between government troops and insurgents, accompanied by political machinations and ubiquitous corruption.
Against this almost Macbethian setting, Cordero's heroes live their ordinary lives: in “The Veneration of St James”, it is little Tiago, who desperately longs to be like his soldier father; in “The Eyes of Saint Lucy”, it is the young family man Pastor, who wants to work abroad so he can afford a colour television for his wife; and in “The Carnival of San Cristobal”, the young girl Dida, who watches the freak show with fascination and finds parallels with her own microcosm in their deformities.
Kristian Sendon Cordero is a poet, prose writer, translator, and filmmaker. His poetry collections in three Filipino languages have won the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award, the Philippine National Book Award, and the Gintong Aklat (Golden Book) Award. He has translated the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Oscar Wilde into Filipino and Bikol. He is currently working on a translation of two of José Rizal's novels into Bikol. In 2019, he received the Southeast Asian Writers Award (SEAWRITE) from the King of Thailand in Bangkok. His poetry and short stories have been translated into German, Spanish, Arabic, French, and Italian.
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