About the author: 
Ricky Lee is a monument in the Philippines; the magazine «Esquire», Philippine edition, has just elected him «Icon of the year 2023». He has written the screenplays for important and popular films (e.g. "Himala", "Moral", "Anak"), and he has helped shape the country's film culture through his work as a teacher for younger screenwriters. It was only at an advanced age that he began to publish novels. They contain the wit and pace of sit-coms, but also the amused reflection of these genres that impact back on life. For all his fame, Ricky Lee is a quiet author known for his immense kindness. The processing of his imprisonment as a student in the early years of the Marcos dictatorship permeates his work, as does his enjoyment of popular genres. The call not to forget permeates his writing as well as an unbelievable confidence in people: In his works, the descent into violence is never inevitable. Life could always be different, more beautiful and more cheerful.

About the book:
Original title: Para Kay B
Language: Tagalog
Published by: Philippine Writers Studio Foundation
Year: 2008
English title: For B (Or How Love Devastates Four Out of Every Five of Us)
Published by: Ateneo de Manila University Press
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Year: 2022
Category: Literature
ISBN: 9786214482290
Imprint: Bughaw
Language: English

The subtitle of this novel is setting the tone: five love stories and only one may end well. Five women are at the center and they don't love the way they are supposed to. Irene, for example, is plagued by an absolute memory of useless facts and is looking for the boy who promised to marry her when she was young. This was in a village where violence reigned - he has lost the memory of her and of those old times when they finally find each other in a motel bed. The middle and longest episode is a parable of a society in which everyone is constantly bombarded by love stories. A woman from a parallel world in which no one can love searches helplessly for her place and her language. When the slogans to love more are transformed into government orders to be funny and happy, Ricky Lee's language goes into overdrive – witty images break any bounds. Laughing out loud, laughing at everything, is a powerful response to the impositions of a country that is getting poorer and nobody understands why. This novel is an elixir of survival, not least in the tenderness with which it follows its protagonists search for love – be it heterosexual, lesbian, gay. 
Does love devastate four out of every five of us? It turns out the narrator of these stories is one of the characters, a man whose love is not requited, who talks and invents and is besieged, in the end, by his characters. As the realities become more violent and the social critique more evident, the characters organize to demand a better ending for their stories. In this last loop of the plot, the basic question arises with new force: What is a happy ending?  

Translation: "Para Kay B" was published in 2008 by Ricky Lee's Philippine Writers Studio Foundation in Tagalog (Filipino) and was a great success. In 2022, an English translation by Noelle Q. De Jesus was published by Ateneo de Manila University Press. A PDF of this can be made available to interested publishers. Annette Hug would translate the book directly from Tagalog.

For further information please contact:

Annette Hug
On this website
E-Mail: [email protected]
Website: www.annettehug.ch