Eating Fire And Drinking Water [Paperback] Chai Arlene J

Manila, 1986. Clare is a journalist in her mid-twenties, watching the Marcos regime crack at the seams. She's been careful — reporting the news but keeping her head down, navigating a dictatorship where one wrong word can get you disappeared. Then she meets a photojournalist whose courage forces her to choose: play it safe, or risk everything for the truth. Arlene Chai's debut is a coming-of-age story set against the People Power Revolution, blending political tension with personal transformation. It's about finding your voice when silence feels safer, and about a city on the edge of either collapse or rebirth. Chai, a Filipina-Australian writer, draws on the real energy of those final, electric days before the dictatorship fell. For readers who loved *The God of Small Things* or anyone drawn to historical fiction where politics and personal stakes collide.