Ashura: A Filipino Reckoning

By Quintin Jose V. Pastrana

In a country riven by death and corruption, unlikely companions risk everything to find a little girl whose secret could expose murderers hiding in plain sight.

Ashura is the story of three lives, intertwined by fate and circumstance, speaking truth to power amid the escalating tide of extrajudicial killings in modern-day Philippines.

Spanning three continents, seven cities, and twelve months, the novel weaves a powerful narrative of interrupted youth, shared identity amid brazen politics, and the elusive search for justice. It traces the invisible threads of kinship that grow stronger as its characters navigate the fragile line between life and death, history and love.

The reader is drawn into separate inner journeys that converge on the bloodstained streets of Metro Manila and Mindanao, the shifting corridors of power in Washington, DC, and the dark recesses of Barcelona--culminating in an uncertain reckoning at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Ultimately, Ashura becomes a shared, unfinished legacy of a nation still struggling to define itself.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9815233866
• ISBN13: 9789815233865
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 232 Pages