On translating the Rizal biography, 'The First Filipino'

I TRANSLATED the late Ambassador Leon Maria Guerrero's prize-winning biography of Jose Rizal, "The First Filipino," into Filipino. In an act of verbal gymnastics, I am translating that introduction into English for this column.

Like Ambeth Ocampo, I first read "The First Filipino" when I was a college student at the Ateneo de Manila University. The book delighted me because Guerrero told the life of Rizal as if it were a 19th-century novel.