This was one of the oddest and densest books I've read recently. The language was difficult for me, perhaps because it was translated? Or perhaps it was so far outside of my cultural milieu. At any rate, I had to work to understand what was going on at some points. In the end, I'm glad I stuck with it and read the whole thing. As part of this story, I learned about the American military killing hundreds of people in the Philippines after an insurrection in the 19th century. I had never heard about this tragedy. Why am I not surprised that our military would react with overwhelming force against a native population?

"It is there country, sergeant. You only hold the keys."
A remarkable novel about war, history, art, memory, and the blur between fact, fiction, and memory. Filipino author Gina Apostol dives deep into her country's tangled history with the United States, which began when we liberated the island from Spain and then stayed on as occupiers (Sound familiar?). Has some similarities with another excellent book about war and memory, Nguyen's "The Sympathizer." A good book on the history of our intervention in the Philippines is "A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902." One of my favorite books of 2018.