The Survivors / Antonio Enriquez.

Set in Zamboanga at the height of World War II, The Survivors, a novel by award-winning writer Antonio Enriquez, casts a different light on the horrors of war by transplanting a colorful cast of characters-men, women and children, civilians, politicians and soldiers, Filipinos, indigenous people and Japanese-from common scenes of razed villages, bloody trenches, and blitzkrieg skies to a vast and unknown forest, in which they face the dangers of the jungle, Japanese atrocities, U.S. air raids, starvation and cannibalism, and strange half-human, half animal creatures: the river people and the cliff-dwellers. Toeing the line between morality and monstrosity, savagery and survival, they learn what it means to love and to forgive-and ultimately, to be human-in dark and trying times.