Moving; sexy; and archly funny; Gina Apostol’s Philippine National Book Award-winning Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship Gina Apostol’s debut novel; available for the first time in the US; tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution. It is the mid-eighties; two decades into the kleptocratic; brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession; and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors. For Primi; the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often; and with greater urgency; so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable “Justice League” of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple; Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she; “a vagabond from history; a runaway from time;” can be saved by sex; love; and books.