Tatler Review: I Was the President's Mistress!! by Miguel Syjuco

From the mind of Man Asian Literary Prize winner, Miguel Syjuco, comes a riveting tale of a political whirlwind that's got it all: corruption, power, sex, and sensational secrets

Above Cover of I Was the President's Mistress!! by Miguel Syjuco

With all the drama of a noon-time telenovela comes a tale that is as complex and complicated as real-life—packed with salacious secrets, whistleblowing, corruption, power-plays, and pun-filled references to Filipino politics and current events. I Was the President’s Mistress!! is the latest novel from Miguel Syjuco, who won the Man Asian Literary Prize for his previous novel, Ilustrado.

Syjuco, a Filipino author, journalist, civil society advocate, and professor to boot has had writing in his veins from an early age. Having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from the Ateneo de Manila University, a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University, and then a PhD in literature from the University of Adelaide, it is no question that Syjuco’s master of the English language and of literature would push his own writing to new and greater heights.

Before his debut novel, Ilustrado was even published, it had won the Grand Prize for a Novel in English at the 2008 Palanca Awards, the Philippines’ highest literary honour. The Palanca Awards have been likened to the Pulitzer Prize in its esteem. In the same year, Syjuco was also awarded the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for Ilustrado, marking yet another feather in the author’s cap.

Published in April of this year, the long-awaited second novel from the lauded author was published, and it proves to be a whirlwind of political satire. Set in the same Manila-adjacent city as Ilustrado, I Was the President’s Mistress!! focuses on a slew of scandals and impeachment trials, with the Philippines’ most famous movie star-slash-recent paramour of the president in the centre of it all: Vita Nova, and the “celebrity tell-all” memoir she presents to us, the reader.

Forgoing conventional chapter structure, the novel is constructed as 24 chapter-long interview transcripts with different characters all telling their own sides of the story to the silent interviewer (who is actually Miguel Syjuco as a character, acting as the ghostwriter of Vita Nova’s memoir), with distracted tangents back to their backstories much like how a friend would spin lengthy anecdotes of their lives into conversation. With Vita at the centre of the stories, the interview transcripts spin a tale of relationships, journalism, politics, fake news, corruption, and more.

Through lengthy, chatty interviews with Vita and the various men in her life, the reader is treated to a myriad of perspectives, all convoluted yet valid, that paint Vita herself in the light of each person’s self-serving agendas that still somehow contrast with her own. The characters themselves are references to known people from Philippine politics—it’s easy to see president Rodrigo Duterte and boxing extraordinaire Manny Pacquiao as inspiration for President Fernando V Estregan, for example—so it pays off to be up to date on the who’s who.

Syjuco’s writing is peppered with references to real people, history, current issues, with a dash of humour too. Add to that his own brand of wit and charm that mixes verbose language with intellectual dialogue and vivid characterisation that holds nothing back, not even crass swearing and graphic sexual encounters.

There’s one thing to say for certain, you’ve never read anything like this before, and likely won’t come across anything like it again. That is, until Syjuco writes a third book, of course.

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Tatler Review: 'I Was the President's Mistress!!' by Miguel Syjuco