Why the Philippine Novel Still Matters for Writers Today

These days, we’ve been so used to swiping, scrolling, and watching. TikTok, reels, and endless feeds make it feel like video has already outplayed text. But for us writers, sticking with long-form reading is part of our discipline. The novel slows us down, makes us pay attention, and reminds us that all the audio-visual stories we consume still trace their roots back to the written word. For Filipino writers especially, our novels give us more than history lessons: they sharpen our craft, deepen our sense of language and nationhood, and place us in a global conversation.

Why should Filipino Writers Care about the Tradition of the Philippine Novel?

Whether we’re crafting fiction or non-fiction, the novel is our laboratory. Think of Wilfrido Nolledo bending English, Spanish, and Tagalog in But for the Lovers, or Gina Apostol twisting English into something playful and distinctly Filipino in The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. In both novels, we experience how language performs in our context.

Novels by Filipino authors have also kept us in the many loops and binds of the Philippine social struggle. In F. Sionil José’s Rosales Saga, a family chronicle is inseparable from questions of land, class, and justice. Lualhati Bautista’s Dekada ’70 gives us a mother’s voice witnessing Martial Law, proving that the personal is also political. Our stories always carry echoes of nationhood, whether in N. V. M. Gonzalez’s quiet rural lives, Nick Joaquin’s explorations of heritage and modernity, or Merlinda Bobis’ magical weaving of intimate memory with collective history.

The Novel as a Literary Institution

Awards, schools, and workshops have kept the novel alive. From state prizes to the Palanca Awards, to writing fellowships abroad, many writers have found the support they needed to finish their books.

The Filipino novel in English has always carried a bigger ambition than its limited readership. As a genre tied to the idea of nationhood, the Filipino novel imagines what it means to be a people, showing how individual growth is bound up with the country’s social and political struggles. From Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere to the novels of the Commonwealth and postwar eras, writers wrestled with how to “represent” the Philippines: Can one voice really speak for a fractured people? Can borrowed Western forms truly capture Filipino realities? Philippine novels is one where language, struggle, and memory are tested and transformed in order to mark our place in the larger, planetary conversation of letters.

But in recent decades, the institution of the novel didn’t freeze within classrooms or academic prizes. Independent publishers and writers working outside traditional publishing channels has expanded the genre beyond political or social niches. Think of Mina V. Esguerra, who built a community of romance readers and writers through self-published ebooks, workshops, and #romanceclass campaigns. Or the new collaborative ventures merging book exhibits and publications. There are many palihans organized by emerging writers’ groups all over the country, circles of peers exchanging drafts, publishing zines, and building their own audiences without waiting for university approval.

What’s New: Philippine Novels You Should Check Out

Some novels, like F. Sionil José’s Mass, put the “masses” at the center. Others, like Nick Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, question whether art can ever escape its responsibility to society. Still others, from Bienvenido Santos to Charlson Ong, Eric Gamalinda, Alfred Yuson, and more recently Gina Apostol or Merlinda Bobis, experiment with giving voice to those often left out: workers, rebels, tribal groups, Chinese Filipinos, or Filipinos abroad.

In our age of climate anxiety, more Philippine novels are getting published that are ecologically conscious. These books reflect how our people live with typhoons, landslides, floods, and earthquakes as part of our daily reality. Nature is a central force that shape lives and magnify the inequalities.

A few recent and notable works that show where the tradition of the Philippine novel is heading today:

• Gina Apostol, La Tercera (2023) — A playful yet poignant exploration of memory, war, and family that pushes the boundaries of form.

• Merlinda Bobis, The Kindness of Birds (2021) — Stories and interwoven voices that reflect on migration, loss, and resilience.

• Eliza Victoria, Wounded Little Gods (2016) — A contemporary novel that blends mystery with the weight of small-town histories.

• Dean Francis Alfar, A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila (2015) — Magical realism that asks what it means to live in an urban, ever-shifting Philippines.

• Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado (2010) — Still essential reading for its daring take on exile, corruption, and what it means to write the “Filipino novel.”

• Elaine Castillo, America Is Not the Heart (2018) — A diasporic novel that complicates what it means to be Filipino in the U.S. context.

At LibroKoto.shop, our reviews draw from copies available at the WordHouse Library.

Carrying the Novel Forward

Although Philippine English is now recognized as a language with its own music, the bigger challenge is still with us: how do we create spaces where our other regional languages don’t just compete, but truly allow Filipinos to be represented on equal ground?

For us writers, the challenge is urgent: let us keep reading Philippine novels. Let them feed our language, deepen our craft, and complicate our view of what it means to write of and from the Philippines. Whenever we pause to read a Philippine novel with new attention, we are carrying this tradition forward. When we let its language and struggles shape our craft, we become part of a larger story. And when we read with urgency, we prepare our voices to echo a distinct pitch in the global chorus.