Merlinda Bobis’ In the Name of the Trees weaves four generations of Bikol women into a powerful exploration of colonial violence, language, land and survival.

Merlinda Bobis’  _In the Name of the Trees_ beguiles with its intricate prose and compressed poetics. In less than 150 pages, it tells the story of four generations of Bikol women, all of whom must, in various ways, resist and adapt to the colonisation and violent regimes of the Philippines.

Its capacious text demonstrates the ways in which present and past are inextricably bound, and how acts of violence disrupt the very divisions and boundaries they attempt to enforce. Throughout the novel, myths, stories, secrets and truths are powerful forces that bind and heal, create and destroy.

Bobis is a Filipino-Australian writer, poet and artist. Her extensive body of work includes plays, radio performances, essays, four novels and six collections of poetry. Her novel  _Locust Girl: A Lovesong_ (2015) won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Philippine National Book Award. Her last book  _The Kindness of Birds_ (2021) was also shortlisted for the Christina Stead Award and the Steele Rudd Award.

In the Name of the Trees is the second book in a thematic trilogy, following The Kindness of Birds, with a third book planned on the world of fish.

The novel begins in Canberra, on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country, with a short and enigmatic opening scene. Seventeen-year-old Dao is in bed watching her grandmother, Lola Narra, and her mother, Pili, argue out of earshot over a “bath basin of lukewarm water, the white plate with the little book, the holy oil, the candle........

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