Gagamba -- The Spider Man-- a novel by F. Sionil Jose

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?GAGAMBA, the cripple, sells sweepstakes tickets the whole day at the entrace to Camarin, the Ermita restaurant. He sees them all-- the big men, politicians, journalists, generals, landlords, and the handsome call-girls who have made Camarin famous. In mid-July 1990, a killer earthquake struck and entombed all the beautiful people dining at the Camarin. Gagamba could have easily gotten killed -- but he survived the earthquake as do two other lucky people who were buried in the rubble. As told by the Philippines' most widely translated author, this novel raises a fundamental question about life's meaning and suggests at the same time the only rational answer.What they say about F. Sionil Jose:" ...America has no counterpart to Jose -- no one who is simultaneously a prolific novelist, a social and political organizer, an editor and journalist, and a small-scale entrepreneur.. Jose's identity has equipped him to be fully sensitive to his nations miseries without succumbing, like many of his characters, to corruption or despair."-- James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly"...The foremost Filipino novelist in English...his novels deserve a much wider readership than the PHilippines can offer. His major work, the Rosales Saga, can be read as an allegory for the Filipino in search of an identity..."-- Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books