Canal de la Reina isang nobela

Canal de la Reina is a classic Tagalog novel by Liwayway A. Arceo, first published in 1972 and reprinted in 1985 — her response to the call for socially committed writing amid the upheavals of the 1970s Philippines. Set in the impoverished Canal de la Reina district of Manila, it turns on a land dispute between Caridad de los Angeles, the property's true owner, and Nyora Tentay, the current claimant.

Nyora Tentay — one of Philippine fiction's memorable villains, bad-tempered and consumed by greed — lends money to the district's poor, then binds them with punishing interest rather than helping them. Around this conflict Arceo builds a portrait of a society marked by inequality, corruption, and the neglect of the powerless, dramatizing the wide gulf between rich and poor with vivid characterization and moral force.