Our Book of the Month for November, with 30% off all month, is Aliasing by Mara Coson. The final book in the Semina series, edited by Stewart Home, it was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2020.

In 1950, Fritz Lang came to the capital en route to Turagsoy to shoot a war film that he later considered to be the worst movie he ever made. He came to the radio station KZRM because he was listening to the radio while on set and he was amazed at the sound bites they got, from everyone from Chiang Kai Shek to Joseph Stalin. He went to KZRM and found out that a man named Koko Trinidad had been impersonating them: The easiest way to control the population is to carry out acts of terror!

An alias is an assumed identity.

In Aliasing the narration of fiction shifts like the weave of a binakul blanket, and the reader is confronted by a procession of simulacra that might be misunderstood as an alternative history of the Philippines. There are no falsehoods here since representation precedes and determines the real. The northern whirlpool weave that provides the novel with its title has been used to confuse evil spirits and protect its wearer while asleep. Almost traditional stories are woven into a post-history covering everyone from Macabebe Marie (the Mata Hari of Manila) to the Catholic mystic Emma de Guzman (known to followers as the Mother of Love, Peace and Joy). Reflecting the hybrid nature of our contemporary world, Aliasing reconfigures our understanding of who we are as a twice-told tall tale from the South.

Mara Coson is a writer and editor from Manila, Philippines and the publisher of Exploding Galaxies, a press which reissues lost classics of Phillipine Literature.