The Adventures of Cayo Malínao and Other Philippine Novelettes

The Adventures of Cayo Malínao and Other Philippine Novelettes

In The Adventures of Cayo Malínao, a hardworking bookkeeper Cayo Malínao—who, from childhood, has led a virtuous and modest life—finally encounters a temptation he can’t resist when he reunites with his childhood best friend Vincentito, now a dissolute card sharp. In thrall to Vincentito, Cayo swiftly falls into a heady addiction to gambling, women, and vice, risking the life he built through the years for what he believes will be the winning gamble of a lifetime.

A poor studious bibliophile attempts to aid his sick mother, but ends up in jail, a seemingly disastrous twist of fate that instead leads him to an exceptional career as the wealthy customs inspector Rufino Rojo in The Promotions of Inspector Rojo. Rojo is assisted in his fortuitous ascents up the rungs of life by well-meaning superiors and fortunate coincidences. However, it is Rojo himself who determines his destiny by behaving with utmost sobriety and following every social dictum, proving that success is not always a matter of courage and ambition.

In Aunt Pasia, the titular character is the widow of a slain revolutionary desperately seeking to avenge her husband, who was assassinated by the local bandit chief Captain Palás. When authorities turn a blind eye, Aunt Pasia becomes obsessed with Palás, hounding his tracks until he gets arrested, and eventually hanged. In the process, Aunt Pasia becomes consumed by her own vindictiveness. The death of her arch-nemesis doesn’t give her peace; instead, it portends the haunting of a nightmare of her own making that almost drives her insane.

Premio Zóbel awardee Guillermo Gómez Windham takes readers on an absorbing literary journey in these three novellas in The Adventures of Cayo Malínao and Other Philippine Novelettes. Published in a bilingual edition, and annotated and introduced by renowned Hispanic literary scholar Ignacio López-Calvo, this book features the best writing of Gómez Windham, who lived during the tumultuous transition from Spanish to American colonial rule in the Philippines.

Despite his Hispanic upbringing, Gómez Windham was an admirer of English-language literature and practiced a distinctively hybrid literary style that unites the stylistic elements of American writing with the ironic themes of the Spanish picaresque genre. In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to his times, Gómez Windham has created a world of repressed obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting social identities. Provocative and meditative, The Adventures of Cayo Malínao and Other Philippine Novelettes reinforces Gómez Windham’s standing as a consummate artist of the conflicted interior lives of characters caught in destinies beyond their control.“With their collaboration on the translation into English of Guillermo Gómez Windham’s The Adventures of Cayo Malínao and Other Philippine Novelettes, Robert Rudder and Ignacio López-Calvo render a great service to Fil