Bringing back magic and myth

“TELL THE STORY. Make a song,” is how Filipino novelist Erwin E. Castillo concludes his preface to the new edition of The Firewalkers. In it, he details how the novel arose in 1992 “while the country tried to rearrange itself, but not too much, and not really.”

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Now republished by local press Exploding Galaxies — the third in its collection of reprinted, forgotten Filipino classics — The Firewalkers is an epic filled with magic and murder. Set in 1913 in the mountain town of Lakambaga, Cavite, it opens with police sergeant Gabriel Diego faced with a series of mysterious deaths, connected with otherworldly ancestors, mythical monsters, and cowboys that roam the land.

This edition also includes a companion piece, “The Watch of La Diane,” which serves as a postlude. The story is set and written in the 1970s, following two lovers who set off across America.

“Most of my grandchildren — bright, tech-savvy, world-traveled cosmopolitans — will be strangers in the world of The Firewalkers and ‘The Watch of La Diane.’ They will be unsure, uncomfortable, vulnerable. But I hope I’ve designed the funhouse, the labyrinth, well enough to lure them in, so they may experience their moment screaming above the abyss, to be able to later declare, ‘I am escaped to tell thee,” said Mr. Castillo in his official statement.