[caption id='attachment_152857' width='215'] Emilio Aguilar Cruz, popularly known as Abé, is an artist, writer, and an expert in Philippine arts and culture[/caption]

NICK Joaquin, whom experts rank as the third person in the triumvirate of great Filipino writers and thinkers with Jose Rizal and Claro M. Recto, so highly admired his friend, Abé—Emilio Aguilar Cruz—that he insisted on writing his biography, instead of contributing only a chapter in a book about him.