Remarkably, Boyd, who has never been to the Philippines, seems to get early twentieth-century Manila just right, infusing it with an oppressive steaminess that makes tragedy for some of the characters seem preordained. Told in flashbacks, the story travels from 1930s Hollywood to the exotic, violent world of the Philippines in 1902, telling a tale of medicine, the murder of American soldiers, and the creation of a magical flying machine. This is a brooding, intense novel that won't tell you much about contemporary Philippines, but will put some of the more brutal history into perspective, particularly the war with the US.

Alan Berlow , Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge (Vintage UK & US).

Prepare to be depressed. This brilliantly atmospheric work of reportage is the story of three murders that took place on the Philippine island of Negros. Impossible to read without feeling intense despair for a country where humble and peaceful people have too often become the tragic pawns in a seedy game of power and money that is played out around them. Even Cory Aquino comes out of it badly. The Church asked her to investigate the murders but she refused, fearful that she might be treading on too many toes.

Alex Garland , The Tesseract (Penguin/Riverhead).

Alex Garland, author of The Beach, has made no secret of his love for the Philippines. Hardly surprising then that his second novel, a sinister and ingenious exploration of fate and chance, is based there. Garland may get most of his Tagalog wrong (it's tsismis, not chismis and konti not conte), but the rest of his prose is devilishly taut and brought more comparisons by critics to Graham Greene. The story? Well it involves a foreigner abroad, a villainous tycoon called Don Pepe, some urchins and a beautiful girl. The characters may be straight from Cliche Street, but Garland's plot is so intriguing and his observational powers so keen that it's impossible not to be swept along by the bravery of it all.

Jessica Hagedom , Dogeaters (Penguin UK & US).

Filipino-American Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn assembles a cast of diverse and dubious characters that comes as close to encapsulating the mania of life in Manila as any writer has ever come. Urchins, pimps, seedy tycoons and corpulent politicos are brought together in a brutal but beautiful narrative that pulls no punches and serves as a jolting reminder of all the country's frailties and woes.

James Hamilton-Paterson , Ghosts of Manila (Vintage/Farrar Straus & Giroux).

Hamilton-Paterson's excoriating novel is haunting, powerful and for the most part alarmingly accurate. Much of it is taken from real life: the extra-judicial salvagings, the corruption, the abhorrent saga of Imelda Marcos's infamous film centre. Here is a writer who not only sees the city, but knows it. A lucid story that is thriller, morality play and documentary in one. Pretty it's not, but if you want Manila dissected, look no further.

James Hamilton-Paterson , Playing With Water: Passion and Solitude on a Philippine Island (Granta/New Amsterdam).

"No money, no honey," says one of the (real-life) characters in Hamilton-Paterson's lyrical account of several seasons spent among the impoverished fishermen of a small barrio in the Visayas. It's the kind of refrain you hear time and again in the Philippines, and one that leads large numbers of young men to turn their backs on provincial life to seek fortune in Manila, where they usually end up hawking newspapers, living in shanties and wishing they were back home. This is a rich and original travel book, which by turns warms and disturbs you.

James Hamilton-Paterson , America's Boy: The Rise and Fall of Ferdinand Marcos and Other Misadventures of US Colonialism in the Philippines (Granta/Henry Holt).

A controversial narrative history of the US-supported dictatorship that came to define the Philippines. Hackles were raised by the very plausible claim that the Marcoses were merely the latest in a long line of corrupt Filipino leaders in a country which had historically been ruled by oligarchies. Ferdinand, do not forget, was welcomed at the White House by Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and the CIA. In the end, a "democratic revolution" replaced him with Corazon Aquino, who came from another great political and landowning dynasty. She, in turn, was followed by Fidel Ramos, Imelda's cousin. Nothing changed: the world applauded, the shadow play went on. Hamilton-Paterson has gathered astonishing information from senators, cronies, rivals, and Marcos family members, including Imelda. If you buy one book about recent history in the Philippines, buy this one.

Nick Joaquin , Manila, My Manila (Bookmark, Philippines).

Veteran Filipino novelist and poet Nick Joaquin's paean to the city of his birth. This is no academic tome, but an eminently readable odyssey through the centuries from the day the diminutive Kingdom of Namayan was established on the banks of the Pasig River. Joaquin never quite gets round to saying exactly what he thinks of contemporary Manila, but reading between the lines it's not hard to feel his dismay. Fellow journalist Augusto Villalon believes Manila has "an urban death wish", with concrete poured over green spaces and refuse dumped in canals. Joaquin never quite goes that far, but he still leaves you with the sense that this is a tribute to the city that was, not the city that exists today.

F Sionil Jose , Dusk (Modern Library, US).

One of the premier novelists in the Philippines, Jose's acclaimed Rosales saga chronicles Filipino struggles and triumphs during the last century. Dusk, the fifth book in the saga, takes place at the end of the nineteenth century as the Filipinos, with the aid of the Americans, finally expelled the Spanish after three centuries of often brutal rule. Of course it wouldn't be a quintessential Filipino novel if it didn't touch on the themes of poverty, corruption, tyranny and love. All are on display here, presented within the context of one man, a common peasant, and his search for contentment. Dusk was only recently released in America in paperback, but you can always buy it from the bookshop owned by Jose himself, in Padre Faura Street, Ermita.

Stanley Karnow , In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines (Ballantine UK & US).

This is really a book about America, not about the Philippines, says Karnow. The Philippines is the landscape, but the story is about America going abroad for the first time in its history at the beginning of the twentieth century and becoming a colonial power, what it did in its colony and what it left behind. In Our Image, which won the Pulitzer Prize, focuses on the relationship that has existed between the two nations since the United States acquired the country from Spain in 1898, examining how America has sought to remake the Philippines as a clone of itself, an experiment marked from the outset by blundering, ignorance and mutual misunderstanding.

Jose Rizal , Noli Me Tangere - Touch Me Not (Bookmark, Philippines).

The book that sparked a revolution and is still required reading for every Filipino schoolchild. It's hard to find outside the Philippines, but worth picking up a copy when you get there. The Noli, a passionate and often elegant exposure of the evils of the friar's rule, was published in 1886 and promptly banned by the Spanish colonial government. It tells the story of barrio boy Crisostomo Ibarra's love for the beautiful Maria Clara, but infuses it with tragedy and significance of almost Shakespearian proportions, documenting the religious fanaticism, the double standards and the rank injustice of colonial rule