Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, the Summer Solstice, Nick Joaquin, Cave and Shadows, May Day Eve, the Woman Who Had Two Navels. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, known also as A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino: An Elegy in Three Scenes is a literary play written in English by Filipino National Artist for Literature and one of the Philippines best postwar author, poet, and playwright Nick Joaquin in 1950. It was described as Joaquins most popular play, as the "most important Filipino play in English", and as probably the best-known Filipino play Apart from being regarded also as the national play of the Philippines because of its popularity, it also became one of the important reads in English classes in the Philippines. Joaquins play was described by Anita Gates, a reviewer from New York Times, as an "engaging, well plotted metaphor for the passing of Old Manila." Set in the Filipino world of pre-World War II Intramuros of Old Manila in October 1941, the play explores the many aspects of Philippine high society by telling the story of the Marasigan sisters, Candida and Paula, and their father, the painter Don Lorenzo Marasigan. Due to an artistic drought on Don Lorenzo's part, the family has to make ends meet by relying on the financial support provided by their brother Manolo and sister Pepang, who were urging them to sell the house. Later on, they also had to take a male boarder, in the person of Tony Javier. Don Lorenzo, who refused to sell, donate, or even exhibit his self-portrait in public, was only content in staying inside his room, a stubbornness that already took a period of one year. The painting has attracted the attention and curiosity of journalists such as a family friend named