Ghosts of Manila

'James Hamilton-Paterson's excoriating book would be unbearably painful were it 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

Ghosts of Manila (first published in 1994) begins in a wasteland near Manila Airport where a small family business works at boiling down the cadavers of police death squad victims and re-assembling them as skeletons for sale to medical students. The novel's urban drama then opens out to bring in burned-out British journalist John Prideaux, archaeologist and diplomat's daughter Ysabella Bastiaan streetwise but rueful policeman Rio Dingca, and Epifania Tigos, who struggles to run a sewing co-operative from within a shantytown.

'It is the author's remarkable achievement that the city, in all its ragged splendour, continues to haunt the mind even...