See here for methodology. Back when I started this project, I was simply recording the top eight books tagged as being in each country by users of on Goodreads and LibraryThing, and then recording which didn’t really qualify. I have switched now to a system where I disqualify the relevant books before constructing my league table, so I’m going back to the Philippines with an updated table.

I disqualified eight books, which is a lot, though not as many as with Bangladesh last week. A lot of GR and LT users use the “philippines” tag for books that are about Filipino migrants to the USA or elsewhere, or about the Second World War in the Pacific, or about US colonial policy more generally.

Specifically, the top book most often tagged “Philippines” on both Goodreads and LibraryThing is Neal Stephenson’s epic Cryptonomicon. I am of course disqualifying it as considerably less than half of the 900+ pages are set in the country. Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala, and The Farm, by Joanne Ramos, are set in the USA. American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, by William Manchester, covers the man’s entire career. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, by Daniel Immerwahr, includes the Philippines as the most egregious case of US colonialism.

Avenue of Mysteries, by John Irving, takes its protagonist to the Philippines, though for less than half of the book. The same appears to be true for the protagonists of Falling Together, by Marisa de los Santos. Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, by Jose Antonio Vargas, is precisely about the immigrant experience in the USA. The Imperial Cruise, by James Bradley, is set on the SS Manchuria in 1905, and while it did visit the Philippines, that was just one of the stops.

So, of those I have allowed onto the list, three are about Americans being held prisoner in the Philippines, including the overall winner, Ghost Soldiers (the other two are In the Presence of my Enemies and We Band of Angels). Trash isn’t explicitly set in Manila, but everyone assumes that it is. Patron Saints of Nothing starts in the USA but I get the impression that more than half of it is set in the Philippines. The Tesseract is very definitely set in today’s Manila, and Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo are nineteenth century classics of Filipino literature.

Next in this sequence I will revisit Ethiopia, and then back to my regular sequence with Argentina.

See here for methodology.

So, the top book most often tagged “Philippines” on Goodreads is Neal Stephenson’s epic Cryptonomicon. I am of course disqualifying it as considerably less than half of the 900+ pages are set in the country, though it does play a crucial role in the narrative.

More than any other country so far, the USA’s historical involvement with the Philippines dominates this list, with the top LibraryThing book with the Philippines tag being a historical account of a military operation during the second world war, a successful American raid on a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

Arsenic and Adobo appears to be set entirely in Chicago, and The Farm in upstate New York, so neither qualifies. I’m disqualifying American Caesar and How to Hide an Empire for the same reason as Cryptonomicon, that less than half of either book deals with the Philippines, though the country is crucial to both narratives. Likewise Avenue of Mysteries, which at least goes to the Philippines, though for less than half of the book.

I’m stretching a point and allowing Trash by Andy Mulligan, because although the setting is not specified, most reviewers seem to think that it is Manila.

The top book set in the Philippines by a Filipino writer is Noli Me Tángere by José Rizal, which ranked only 13th on my list, behind many stories of expat Filipinos and in-country white saviours.

Well, that was a bit depressing. Next up is Ethiopia (actually I should probably have done it two countries ago, before Japan).

India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revised) | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan | Yemen | Canada | Poland | Morocco | Angola | Ukraine | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Mozambique | Ghana | Peru | Saudi Arabia | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire