When the walls talk to Marga Ortigas

The pandemic has rekindled in me a love of reading beyond the predictable comic books, news and magazine articles and the Game of Thrones novels. Over this time, I discovered the thought-provoking historian, professor and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari and fiction writers like Emily St. John Mandel and Jennifer Egan. When I put one book down, I'd look for the next.

It does tickle me immensely that my summer 2022 reading includes two books by people I know (full disclosure), The House on Calle Sombra by Marga Ortigas and Riverrun by Danton Remoto both published by Penguin Random House SEA. Both are stories set in the Philippines. After reading all these books with stories set in North America, Europe or "Westeros," it's exciting to have current, fresh new fiction set in the homeland.