Part memoir, part political history and part English lesson (I’m not kidding, I learned a bit about language from this). Evangelista is a reporter for a news outlet in the Philippines, and she details the historical, political and cultural context during the lead up to Duterte’s election, and the unbelievable number and brutality of state-supported extrajudicial killings since his election. Her writing style is deliberately unsettling:

In the early years of the war, I fell in love, I learned to ride a bike, and I discovered firsthand just how much blood could fit on the inside of a grown man. The world kept turning, and people kept dying, and for the next few years I sat under the leafy green and wrote about the dead.

I find it sad that Duterte as a character is not shocking anymore. His rhetoric, his zeal to create an ‘us v them’ narrative to accomplish his political goals, his naked craving for power for its own sake — this kind of boorish populism is too common in modern politics.

The stories are as horrifying as you expect. Innocent people cast as thugs and dangerous psychopaths to justify their killing. State-endorsed police corruption. A leader who lies without hesitation, and fires anyone who doesn’t show sufficient fealty.

The book is unflinching and grim, but also a very grave warning about taking our candidates ‘seriously, not literally’. It never proves to be the case. If they get elected, they always follow through.