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LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’ BEST BOOKS OF 2023
ONE OF THE ECONOMIST’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
ONE OF THE NEW YORKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
TIME MAGAZINE’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘A journalistic masterpiece’ David Remnick, New Yorker

My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs – a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands – immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had made: ‘I’m really not a bad guy,’ he said. ‘I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.’

A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist.

Publisher Review

A journalistic masterpiece . . . One of the most remarkable pieces of narrative nonfiction I have read in a long, long time -- David Remnick * New Yorker * Powerful...Evangelista makes us feel the fear and grief that she felt as she chronicled what Duterte was doing to her country. But appealing to our emotions is only part of it; what makes this book so striking is that she wants us to think about what happened, too. * New York Times * Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story -- Tara Westover, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of EDUCATED In this blindingly ambitious, unfathomably brave, fiercely reported book, Patricia Evangelista exposes the evil in her country with perfect clarity fueled by profound rage, her narrative voice at once utterly brutal and terrifyingly vulnerable. In short, clear sentences packed with faithfully recorded details, she reveals the nature of unbridled cruelty with an insightfulness that I have not encountered since the work of Hannah Arendt...Few of history's grimmest chapters have had the fortune to be narrated by such a withering, ironic, witty, devastatingly brilliant observer. You may think you are inured to shock, but this book is an exploding bomb that will damage you anew, making you wiser as it does so -- Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of FAR FROM THE TREE In this haunting work of memoir and reportage, Patricia Evangelista both describes the origins of autocratic rule in the Philippines, and explains its universal significance. The cynicism of voters, the opportunism of Filipino politicians, the appeal of brutality and violence to both groups - all of this will be familiar to readers, wherever they are from -- Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY A beautiful, gripping and essential book that paints a picture of how autocracy takes root -- Ben Rhodes, author of AFTER THE FALL: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We've Made Shattering...an astonishing and frightening expose that won't soon be forgotten * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * Analytical, ambitious and told with empathy, this will stand as a definitive historical account of the Phillippines' drug war * Booklist (starred review) * Heartbreaking personal stories underscore the consequences of a government-incited extrajudicial rampage * Kirkus Reviews *