December 1, 2002 -- Miguel Syjuco is en route to Manila. Ten months earlier, the body of his mentor, the Filipino author Crispin Salvador, was found floating in the Hudson River -- spread-eagled and barely clothed. And the manuscript of his reportedly groundbreaking to-be-published work, The Bridges Ablaze, is missing. Ilustrado, from the Spanish word for the educated Filipino class in the Spanish colonial era, is a novel by Miguel Syjuco which explores Philippine history through the lives and genealogies of the narrator and the Posthumous Character of Crispin Salvador.