In the Country ─ Stories

These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere—and, sometimes, turning back again.

A pharmacist living in New York smuggles drugs to his ailing father in Manila, only to discover alarming truths about his family and his past. In Bahrain, a Filipina teacher drawn to a special pupil finds, to her surprise, that she is questioning her own marriage. A college student leans on her brother, a laborer in Saudi Arabia, to support her writing ambitions, without realizing that his is the life truly made for fiction. And in the title story, a journalist and a nurse face an unspeakable trauma amidst the political turmoil of the Philippines in the 1970s and ’80s.

In the Country speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home. From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Alvar’s powerful debut collection explores the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined. Deeply compassionate and richly felt,In the Country marks the emergence of a formidable new writer.

MIA ALVAR was born in Manila in 1978 and grew up in Bahrain and New York City. She received an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University and a B.A. from Harvard College. Her short fiction has appeared inOne Story, The Missouri Review, FiveChapters, and The Cincinnati Review among other publications; has been cited for distinction inThe Best American Short Stories; and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She has received grants and residencies from Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Blue Mountain Center for the Arts, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and Sarah Lawrence College. Mia is currently a writer-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.