Ghosts of Manila - Softcover

James Hamilton-Paterson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099298112 ISBN 13: 9780099298113

Publisher: Vintage, 1995

Synopsis

"Hamilton-Paterson's excoriating book would be unbearably painful if it were not so beautifully written. The clarity of his vision and the lucid elegance of his prose - lightened by flashes of gallows humour - make this one of the most extraordinary and powerful novels I have read for years" - Literary Review

About this title

About the Author:

James Hamilton-Paterson is the author of the bestselling Empire of the Clouds, which was hailed as a classic account of the golden age of British aviation. He won a Whitbread Prize for his first novel, Gerontius, and among his many other celebrated books are Seven-Tenths, one of the finest books written in recent times about the oceans, the satirical trilogy that began with Cooking with Fernet Branca, and the autobiographical Playing With Water. Born and educated in England, he has lived in the Philippines and Italy and now makes his home in Austria.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Set in post-Marcos contemporary Manila, this novel from versatile British writer Hamilton-Paterson (The Great Deep, 1992, etc.) is riveting as a work of docufiction but less satisfying as a conventional novel. A part-time resident of the Philippines, Hamilton-Paterson has a familiarity with local politics, customs, and history that gives his subtext--a country infected by deadly corruption--an impressive journalistic authority. The Manila he describes is a wasteland of cesspools, slums, sexual exploitation, and sweatshops where, with rare exceptions, everything and everyone has a price. Former British filmmaker John Prideaux, in his 40s, has taken up anthropology and is in Manila to explore what makes a society run amok. Fellow Brit, aristocratic Ysabella Bastiaan, an archaeologist, has come to work on a local dig. More a vehicle for the plot than a credible character, she is thinly drawn, as indeed are most characters except for Inspector Rio Dingca, Manila's only honest cop. The story, in which desperate squatters living on the margins are deliberately murdered and terrorized by a ``vampire'' employed by Lettie Tan, a local bordello owner, drug dealer, and entrepreneur, is secondary to Hamilton-Paterson's indictment of the Philippine government. Characters describe how children are kidnapped for prostitution; how hundreds of workers are left buried in concrete in Imelda Marcos's grandiose cultural center; how the important archaeological find located in the squatters' slum will be cynically preserved in the midst of the planned upscale mall; and how police, tired of corrupt judges and lawyers, take justice into their own hands and deliver criminals they have executed illegally to a Chinese ``pie-factory'' that renders their bodies into skeletons for export. Memorable insights and much vivid writing are not enough to give life to a flimsy story overwhelmed by an enormous and urgent mission. A pity. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0099298112
• ISBN 13: 9780099298113
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288