The best known books set in each country: The Philippines revisited

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.

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters
LibraryThing
owners
Ghost SoldiersHampton Sides37,6712,839
TrashAndy Mulligan14,3211,080
Patron Saints of NothingRandy Ribay 18,192667
In the Presence of my EnemiesGracia Burnham7,8731,365
The TesseractAlex Garland6,8911,259
Noli Me TángereJosé Rizal8,268724
We Band of AngelsElizabeth M. Norman4,555567
El FilibusterismoJosé Rizal6,288376

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.