Playing with Water is a dazzling personal memoir and exploration of Philippine village life and hidden seascapes, of the precarious existence of ordinary Filipinos and of the last gasping days of the Marcos regime, as witnessed from the liminal world of the island Tiwarik and the coastal village of Kansulay.

Rich in astonishing detail, in language that is sensual, acerbic, delicately empathetic and technically precise, revealing both the suchness of things and the mystery that lies at their heart, the book cuts back and forth across time and geography, from Hamilton-Paterson's childhood in austere, postwar Britain, to a Manila "disturbingly devoid of a center."

2018/304pp
bookpaper/paperback