At a busy intersection in Manila, the magical and the seedy collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and child prostitution, dreams of friendship and the global 'war on terror'. A hut in the slums becomes a cathedral and silence is an exchange of breaths. This raw and hard-hitting novel captures issues of our times and is delicately spare in its prose, with room for silences. Reading it is like walking into the lantern maker's hut where 'life must be squeezed to pocket-size, breath must be kept spare...be frugal where life is fragile'.