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.
