CARMEN Guerrero Nakpil's latest book - "I promise, this is my last" but should we believe her? - is a juicy account of the men and women who made history such an intriguing read that the best review is to quote from the book, in her own words.
Launched like some historical event at the Filipinas Heritage Library, with flags of the Katipunan for background and amid the triumphal music of a brass band, "Heroes and Villains" became her 12th book and lives up to her promise - no, not that it's her last, but that "it's going to be dynamite... very controversial!"
She has dug up a closetful of rattling, tattling skeletons - the kind of stories that the revolutionaries would never have wanted the propagandists to uncover, the kind of gossip (documented) that today's tabloids would gleefully sensationalize in the name of press freedom. Imagine, Dr. Jose Rizal and Gen. Antonio Luna fighting over the same girl. And the dashing Macario Leon Sakay a kidnapper? Why not, if the woman he abducted was the beautiful wife of a governor?
There are 17 episodes in the book, a lusty look at the scandals, the betrayals, the pain and the passions of revolution and patriotism, a time so long ago it's almost Old Testament. Only Chitang could've given us such a fresh, invigorating and entertaining narrative.
