But for the Lovers

In But for the Lovers, Hidalgo de Anuncio, a jaded Spanish vaudevillian brings home to Ojos Verdes a girl lost in the streets of Japanese-occupied Manila. With his attendant Molave Amoran—wistful guitarist and thief—the payaso guides his lost crew through the startling grotesqueries and tragedies inside a devastated Manila. Literary critic and writer Caroline Hau describes the book as a “comic but fraught allegory of Spanish, American, and Japanese imperial contest over the Filipino ‘alma’ (soul).”