Some People Need Killing

A fearless, powerfully written on-the-ground account of a nation careening into fascism, through harrowing stories of the Philippines' state-sponsored assassinations of its citizens.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES' BEST BOOKS OF 2023
ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
TIME MAGAZINE'S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
'A journalistic masterpiece' David Remnick, New Yorker

My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don't wait very long.

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista's meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines' drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte's war on drugs - a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands - immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had made: 'I'm really not a bad guy,' he said. 'I'm not all bad. Some people need killing.'

A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist.