People Are Strange

Misfits and outcasts populate People Are Strange, a collection of stories by one of the Philippines' most enigmatic writers and winner of the Philippine Centennial Prize, the highest award ever given in Philippine history. An unforgettable panorama of surreal weirdness, People Are Strange is like Twilight Zone with an Asian, magic realist twist. In these eight stories, Gamalinda creates a stranger-than-fiction world "where normal doesn't exist." There are former Manila celebrities-one a personal psychic of the Marcoses, another the "Elvis of Manila"-who must deal with anonymity and change in the U.S. There's a woman who receives emails from her dead ex-husband, and a poet who uses his student in a publishing scam that turns them into the most notorious literary frauds of their time. There's a man who discovers he can change his skin color at will, and becomes the object of a worldwide manhunt. In a story inspired by Kafka, a fly that infests an apartment parallels the apartment dweller's inconsequential life. In another story, Skylab falls, and a small group of people forms a pop-up cult to stop it from hitting Manila. And finally there's a tender story about the author's grandfather and the strange pact he made with his two best friends-to come back from the dead and let the others know what the afterlife is all about.