Literary places in Manila

Mapped

• 1990

  Dogeaters

  Jessica Hagedorn

  Hagedorn's Manila is a city told in fragments: the air-conditioned movie palaces and department stores of the downtown Avenue, the perfumed nightclubs of Ermita, the vast slums of Tondo, and the guarded gates of Malacanang, all held together by radio soaps, imported films and the daily violence of the Marcos years. The map runs across the old heart of the city, from the river districts of Binondo and Santa Cruz south to Ermita and east to the presidential palace.

  5 places →

• 1887

  Noli Me Tangere

  José Rizal

  Rizal's incendiary portrait of the Spanish colonial Philippines follows Crisóstomo Ibarra, home from Europe with plans to build a school, as the friars who rule the islands destroy him. The book moves between the capital and the provinces: the merchant houses of Binondo, the walled clerical fortress of Intramuros, the promenades along the Pasig, the killing field of Bagumbayan where the author himself would later be shot, and Ibarra's home town of San Diego in the countryside to the south.

  5 places →