Dusk
SynopsisPlot
Set in the 1880s, Dusk records the exile of a tenant family from its village and the new life it attempts to make in the small town of Rosales. Here commences the epic tale of a family unwillingly thrown into the turmoil of history. But this is more than a historical novel; it is also the eternal story of man's tortured search for true faith and the larger meaning of existence. Jose has achieved a fiction of extraordinary scope and passion, a book as meaningful to Philippine literature as One Hundred Years of Solitude is to Latin American literature.
Story
About this book
Dusk, originally published in the Philippines under the title Po-on, is the opening novel of F. Sionil Jose's five-part Rosales Saga. Set in the 1880s, it follows a tenant farming family forced into exile from their village. They resettle in the small town of Rosales, in the Pangasinan province of Luzon, where they try to build a new life under difficult conditions. The novel sits at a turning point in Philippine history, as Spanish colonial rule weakens and the country edges toward upheaval.
Jose portrays the physical and emotional hardships faced by ordinary Filipinos caught between colonial powers. The family's displacement is shaped by forces far beyond their control, including land tenure systems, religious authority, and the politics of occupation. Alongside these historical pressures, the novel follows its characters through questions of faith, loyalty, and personal meaning. The story moves between intimate domestic life and the broader sweep of national change.
The Rosales Saga spans several generations and multiple decades of Philippine history. Dusk, as the chronological starting point, establishes the family, the landscape, and the social tensions that carry forward through the remaining four novels in the sequence.
