Dream Jungle

By Jessica Hagedorn

Book Overview

Jessica Hagedorn has received enormous critical acclaim for her edgy, high-energy novels chronicling the clash and embrace of American and Filipino cultures. With Dream Jungle, she breaks through to a new level of narrative daring and has written her most complex and accomplished novel to date. Dream Jungletakes off from two seemingly unrelated events-the discovery of a lost Stone Age tribe in a remote mountainous area of the Philippines and the filming of an epic Vietnam War movie in the rain forest. But the "lost tribe" just might be a clever hoax masterminded by a brooding wealthy iconoclast-and the Hollywood movie seems doomed as the cast and crew continue to self-destruct in a cloud of drugs and egos. At once a sensual and razor-sharp indictment of colonialism, Dream Jungleevokes the desperate beauty and rank corruption of the Philippines from the height of the Marcos era in the mid-1970s to the end of the twentieth century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670884588
• ISBN13: 9780670884582
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.1" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

I'm a Jessica Hagedorn Fan!

This is the 3rd book I've read by Jessica Hagedorn. Her writing is amazing! The characters in Dream Jungle are well developed... The subject matter and themes discussed are also well written and developed and edgy. Dream Jungle is a fun, fast, gritty page turner! Once you begin reading this novel it is difficult to put down as you want to find out what happens next.

Dream Jungle

Loved this book. One of my new favorites. Beautiful language. Well connected and intertwined stories. Loved it!!

mysterious, disturbing, alluring

Such a mysterious, alluring & disturbing book! What is good: the writing. The language. The sense of place. You can feel the heat. Be utterly squashed by the poverty. Be intrigued by the characters. It's even okay that you don't know if the tribe is a hoax or not. What is annoying: the many characters, and many POVs, so many that it's hard to keep track of them all. It is also annoying that sometimes a section on a certain character is in first person, and sometimes third. Well worth reading.

A Wild Ride

What a ride. In short, it was a rush to read Dream Jungle. The characters are fascinating and the environment and situations these people are in this story are as equally compelling. I can't even begin to describe the book because the characters and plot lines are so layered and complex. It is woven tightly though and in the end, everything makes perfect sense. Jessica Hagedorn is one of the premiere Filipina American writers around--thank you for consistently producing outstanding work!