The Lost Diary of Rizal by Scy Sze

I received my copy of the Lost Diary of Rizal almost over four months ago from the author herself, yet only had the chance to start reading it during an 8-hour butt-numbing trip to Laoag City earlier this month. I finished almost half of the book during that trip and by then I was already captivated by the interesting concept and was deeply engaged with the story line.  Yes, the author is a dear friend of mine and yes, that is my artwork printed in the cover, but these doesn’t change the fact that I’m not really fond of books, especially thick novels such as this, my boredom would easily take-over just after a few pages. But somehow, this time it was different, I found myself wanting to finish the story, I was tempted to just read the end part but did not want to miss any details of how it happened. The details were beautifully written that your imagination would go on auto-cruise and somehow find yourself transported to the story’s setting. That’s what I felt.

Scy Sze described the book in one of her press interviews as – ‘the story is not entirely fiction yet not entirely factual, and may be categorized as ‘historical fiction’. She could have not coined a more perfect term – Historical Fiction. The imaginary love story perfectly blended with the bits of historical facts that made me believed of its possibility to be true. The details as I’ve said, were well-written that the reader’s imagination just goes on auto-cruise while reading. And after finally finishing the book, I think one of the great things that this book may achieve is to spark renewed interest in the life of our National Hero. It gave a new and interesting perspective to view the actual life of Jose Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda, his personality, his family background, his achievements, and most of all his ultimate sacrificed, all of these were told in the most fascinating way, by himself.