Literary career
Apostol's debut novel Bibliolepsy, published by the University of the Philippines Press, won the 1997 Philippine National Book Award for Fiction. The novel is set in Manila in the 1980s, during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos up to the 1986 People Power Revolution. On its first run, the novel sold out and went out of print. It was republished in the United States by Soho Press in 2022. [6] [7]
Her second novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata won the 2010 Philippine National Book Award for Fiction, as well as the biannual Gintong Aklat Award. It was republished in the United States by Soho Press in 2021. [8]
Her American debut, Gun Dealers' Daughter, won the 2013 PEN Open Book Award [2] and was shortlisted for the 2014 Saroyan International Prize. [9] [1]
Her 2018 novel, Insurrecto , was one of Publishers Weekly's 2018 Ten Best Books, [10] and was shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. [11] Portions of her short story, "The Unintended," which was published in the Manila Noir anthology edited by Jessica Hagedorn, appear in the novel. [12]
She has contributed to the Los Angeles Review of Books , [13] The New York Times , [14] [15] [16] and Foreign Policy . [17]
In an interview, Apostol said that her current favorite novelist is Elena Ferrante. [18]
The Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy owns two of her novels, Insurrecto and Gun Dealer's Daughter. [19]
