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My Brother My Executioner Introduction Francisco Sionil Jose was born on December 4, 1924 in Rosales, Pangasinan, Philippines. It was in public school that Jose was first introduced to literature and later at the University of Santo Tomas where he graduated from the College of Philosophy and Letters. While working as an editor and a writer for The United States Information Service and The Manila Times Magazine in Manila, Jose also engaged in writing short stories and eventually novels. In the late fifties Jose founded the Philippine chapter of PEN, an international organization of poets, playwrights, and novelists. In 1965 he started his own publishing house SOLIDARIDAD and a year later began publishing the Solidarity a journal on current affairs, ideas and the arts where he also is the editor. The sheer volume of his writings has placed F. Sionil Jose at the forefront of Philippine writing in English. It was in 1962 when his first novel, The Pretenders which is the first leg of his five-novel masterpiece was published. The Rosales saga, as the 5 novels were called, consisted of Tree, My Brother, My Executioner, Mass, and Po-on. This was eventually followed by 5 more novels, five books of short stories and a book