After only two years of publishing books, the Center for Kapampangan Studies has won the country’s highest book award given by the Manila Critics Circle.

Gloria: Roman Leoncio’s Kapampangan Translation of Huseng Batute’s Verse Novel, Lost and Found, co-edited by the Center and Ambassador Virgil Reyes, Jr. and published by the Holy Angel University Press, won this year’s National Book Award (Translation Category). The book presents and analyzes the translation of a work of a major Tagalog writer, Jose Corazon de Jesus, a.k.a. Huseng Batute, done by an obscure Kapampangan writer, Roman Leoncio, in the late 1920s. Apparently, the translation had been lost until Ambassador Reyes stumbled upon the manuscripts 70 years later under the most serendipitous circumstances.

National Artist Nick Joaquin hailed the book as a significant collaboration between Kapampangans and Tagalogs, whose paths have alternately crossed, merged and even collided in the course of the nation’s history.

The book is only the Center’s third; a previous publication, Kapampangan Pioneers in the Philippine Church, was also a finalist in the 2003 National Book Awards (History Category).

Meanwhile, the Angeles City Sangguniang Panlunsod unanimously approved Resolution No. 4261, S-2004 congratulating the Center for Kapampangan Studies “for winning the country’s most prestigious award for publications.” The resolution was sponsored by Councilors Vega-Cabigting, Aguas, Sangil, Rivera, Lacson and De La Cruz and seconded by Councilors Maniago, Ganzon, Yabut, del Rosario and Mallari; it was signed by City Vice Mayor Dr. Ricardo Zalamea.