[Hot Off the Press] Love without a Heart

New Translation from the Ateneo Press Love Without a Heart is a tale of empowerment against the patriarchy 

A new release from the Ateneo Press, Love Without a Heart by Iñigo Ed. Regalado, translated by Soledad S. Reyes, follows a young woman grappling with a timeless problem: heartbreak. She is devastated by a man she thought she could trust and by a society that has never been kind to women. Though deemed a fallen woman, how will she rise against it all? 

Set during the American colonial period, teenage Sela falls for the charms of poet and journalist, Fidel. It is revealed later on that he is betrothed to another woman. With her reputation in ruins, Sela goes on a long and arduous journey to find and reclaim her power in a patriarchal society. Sela and the other women characters provide glimpses into the complex lives of marginalized women of the time. Women who made difficult choices to survive. Women who chose their own paths despite the restrictions that sought to choose for them.

Readers are not strangers to the stereotypical female characters—damsels in distress who need to be saved and fallen women who are meant to be cautionary tales. Sela becomes neither. She is a woman with a past and this translation says there is no shame in that. She has a present and a future that she continues to fight for, as all women still do. 

About the Author

Born in Manila in 1888, Iñigo Ed. Regalado was a renowned poet, novelist, playwright, and critic and recipient of multiple awards, including Gawad El Renacimiento, Commonwealth Award for Literature, Medalyong Ginto ng Panitik ng Kababaihan, and Cultural Heritage Award. His other novels are also considered canonical works, such as Madaling-Araw (1909) and Sampagitang Walang Bango (1918). He died in 1976.

About the Translator

Soledad S. Reyes is the country’s premier literary scholar and translator whose work focuses on revitalizing Tagalog classics such as the fictions of Rosario de Guzman-Lingat and Macario Pineda. She is the author of Nobelang Tagalog, 1905-1975: Tradisyon at Modernismo and, most recently, the memoir Balik-Tanaw: The Road Taken. She is professor emeritus at the Ateneo de Manila University. 

Love without a Heart by Iñigo Ed. Regalado, translated by Soledad S. Reyes is published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press under the Bughaw imprint. The book retails at PHP 475 and is available at the Ateneo University Press Bookshop in Bellarmine Hall, and the Press’s official Lazada and Shopee stores.

Get your copy in paperback: Lazada | Shopee