Early in his career, he was a fellow of the 1998 Silliman National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental.

Even before it was published, Syjuco's debut novel Ilustrado won the Grand Prize for a Novel in English at the 2008 Palanca Awards, the Philippines' highest literary honor.

[8] In 2011, Ilustrado joined books by David Mitchell, Aleksandar Hemon, Marie NDiaye, and Wells Tower for the Premio von Rezzori.

In 2011, it was published in Serbian (Geopoetika), French (Editions Christian Bourgois), Catalan (Tusquets), Italian (Fazi), Japanese (Hakusuisha), Czech (Jota), German (Klett-Cotta), and Brazilian Portuguese (Companhia das Letras).

[13] Syjuco is represented by Peter Straus at the Rogers, Coleridge and White Literary Agency in London and by Melanie Jackson in New York City.