The House on Calle Sombra

"The House on Calle Sombra" is a genre-defying novel that explores memory, identity, and intergenerational reckoning against the backdrop of post-colonial Manila.

Told through a shifting, mosaic-like structure that mirrors the elusive nature of memory itself, the story follows a grandson’s return to a crumbling ancestral home where silence, impotence, and half-told truths linger in every room.

As their once-esteemed family falls deeper into quiet ruin, the grandson begins to piece together the fractures in both his lineage and his country.

Set against the long shadows of colonialism, dictatorship, and social transformation, this atmospheric and richly layered novel examines how political and personal histories are inherited, distorted, and endured.

Spare, lyrical, and emotionally unflinching, "The House on Calle Sombra" speaks to the universal struggle of confronting what remains.

Though deeply rooted in a fictionalized Philippines, its portrayal of love, loss, and the fragile architectures of the self resonates across cultures—offering a profound meditation on the nature of truth, the cost of silence, and the private sacrifices made in the name of survival.