Iro
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Pub Date May 25 2027 | Archive Date May 14 2027
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Description
A feminist folk-horror thriller about a monster and a town that can’t look away, Iro—“dog” in Bisaya—is ultimately a gripping and astute novel about who sees, who tells, and who controls the narrative.
In the southernmost reaches of the Philippines, a thousand miles from the capital, there is a coastal region known as Davao Occidental. Mostly poor farmers and fisherman inhabit this resource-rich, semi-tropical, and semi-feudal paradise. It is ruled, however, by a powerful dynastic family: the Mallaris.
A series of brutal murders in one of the small, rural towns in the region becomes news, then spectacle, then an occasion for collective hysteria. The victims are all men. The perpetrator, according to reports, is a monstrous female creature. As the killings multiply, Governor Roland Mallari—a man raised on guns, government propaganda, and the hypnotic glow of television—is propelled towards a reckoning. So, too, are the ruling elite of his milieu and the townspeople themselves, forced to confront the vicious power dynamics and cycles of violence that have defined their lives for generations and in which they have been complicit. Marta, Governor Mallari’s daughter-in-law and the mayor’s wife, is drawn into organizing the community’s response, as Roland Mallari’s moment of reckoning grows nearer and nearer every day.
Blending horror, mystery, and sharp social critique, Iro is a story about what happens when violence becomes content to be consumed. For readers of Mexican Gothic and Nightbitch, and anyone who's ever doomscrolled a community’s unravelling in real time.
Advance Praise
“Lacuesta has the rare gift of all true literary artists. He creates characters and narratives that illuminate the universal quest for an answer to the great and enduring question of our existence: Who am I?”—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“Lacuesta expertly mixes the fictional with real details to the point that you can’t tell the difference.”—Lifestyle Inquirer
“Excellent storytelling.”—Philstar Lifeource
“A haunting and powerful work of Philippine fiction.”—Alfred A. Yuson, The Philippine Star
Marketing Plan
FOLK HORROR MEETS POLITICAL THRILLER: A monstrous female creature is killing men in a remote Philippine province, while a powerful political dynasty scrambles to contain the violence—and the story being told about it. Iro combines a propulsive horror plot with a razor-sharp portrait of corruption, class, gender, and inherited power.
MEET THE KARDASHIANS, DIRECTED BY JORDAN PEELE: At the center of Iro are the Mallaris, a wealthy political dynasty whose lives encompass elections and kickbacks, Instagram followers and luxury developments, guns and bodyguards, servants and family secrets. Lacuesta turns the machinery of dynastic power into wickedly entertaining social satire.
WHEN HORROR GOES VIRAL: Shaky phone footage, TikTok sightings, reels, rumors, fake news, and grisly murders turn a local monster story into a spectacle everyone can consume. Iro asks what happens to truth—and to violence—once everyone has a camera and a platform.
A MONSTER WITH A MISSION: The creature at the center of Iro doesn't kill indiscriminately: its victims are men. As Marta realizes, “They don’t hurt women. They take the men,” transforming the conventions of the monster story into a provocative exploration of gender, violence, and revenge.
A PHILIPPINES RARELY SEEN IN AMERICAN FICTION: Set far from Manila in the fictional provincial town of Kidapalong, Iro moves between haciendas and slums, political offices and servants’ quarters, old folk beliefs and contemporary social media, revealing a society in which feudal power and twenty-first-century life coexist uneasily. The supernatural traditions are woven into everyday life—the characters grow up with stories of aswangs, kapres, dwarves, and demons alongside Instagram, TikTok, gated developments, and national politics.
FOR READERS OF: Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix, and Rachel Yoder, as well as Samantha Schweblin’s Fever Dream, Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea, Francine Toon’s Pine, Eka Kurniawan’s Man Tiger, Silvia Moreno Garcia’s Mexican Gothic.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9798889662563 |
| PRICE | $25.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 192 |