'Some People Need Killing' in New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2023

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'Some People Need Killing' in New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2023

ABS-CBN News

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Updated Nov 29, 2023 02:43 PM PHT

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Mark Nicdao
Filipina journalist Patricia Evangelista, author of "Some People Need Killing". Mark Nicdao

"Some People Need Killing" by Filipina journalist Patricia Evangelista was included by the New York Times in its list of the 10 Best Books of 2023.

The list consists of five fiction and five nonfiction works, which were selected by The New York Times Book Review.

Evangelista's nonfiction book tells the stories of the "drug war" in the Philippines that its victim never lived to tell.

"This powerful book mostly covers the years between 2016 and 2022, when Rodrigo Duterte was president of the Philippines and pursued a murderous campaign of extrajudicial killings — EJKs for short. Such killings became so frequent that journalists like Evangelista, then a reporter for the independent news site Rappler, kept folders on their computers that were organized not by date but by hour of death," the New York Times said of the book.

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"Offering the intimate disclosures of memoir and the larger context of Philippine history, Evangelista also pays close attention to language, and not only because she is a writer. Language can be used to communicate, to deny, to threaten, to cajole. It can propagate lies, but it also allows one to speak the truth."

Reacting to her inclusion, Evangelista said she is "absolutely staggered" by the news.

"I wrote the story, but it's not just mine. The book was the product of many years of work and the efforts of a great many remarkable people, some of them survivors, who bore witness and chose to document a savage time," she wrote on Instagram.

"I am glad to know the book has been read. I am humbled there is an audience willing to listen. I hope the story goes far, and am honored to have been part of its telling."

Here are the 10 Best Books of 2023 by The New York Times:

FICTION

  • 'The Bee Sting' by Paul Murray
  • 'Chain-Gang All-Stars' by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  • 'Eastbound' by Maylis de Kerangal
  • 'The Fraud' by Zadie Smith
  • 'North Woods' by Daniel Mason

NONFICTION

  • 'The Best Mind' by Jonathan Rosen
  • 'Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs' by Kerry Howley
  • 'Fire Weather' by John Vaillant
  • 'Master Slave Husband Wife' by Ilyon Woo
  • 'Some People Need Killing' by Patricia Evangelista

"Some People Need Killing" was also included in Time magazine's Top 100 Must-Read Books of 2023.

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