Cave and Shadows is a 1983[1]whodunit[2] and Martial Law era “metaphysical” thriller[3][4] novel written by Philippine National ArtistNick Joaquin. The setting of the novel is during Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law in the Philippines,[5][6] including the time in Manila when activism was alive and demonstrations were frequent before August 1972 (described as Joaquin’s “‘objective correlative’ to the Crisis of ’72”[4]), before the declaration of martial rule. It is a detective fiction that also deals with and arcane and historical cults involving beatas or “beatified women” (a group of religious lay women who were "repressed by a male-dominated, colonial order"[4]) and strange events occurring inside unfamiliar caves in the Metro Manila area. Other themes include politics, love, family, friendship, reconciliation, and tyranny.[2] One of two novels authored by Joaquin during his lifetime[4] (written twenty-two years after Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels[4]), it is regarded as an important book[7] to read for Philippine literature students.[1] In this work, Joaquin interspersed historical facts and with fiction resulting to a mesh of “multi-layered meanings”.[1] One of the main concept for the plot is the “routinary paganisation” by Filipinos of the Western-rooted religion known as Catholicism.[8]
The bizarre events in this novel includes the inexplicable death of Nenita Coogan.[9] Coogan’s body was found naked inside a cave located within the suburban regions of Manila.[4] The death by Coogan triggered a criminal investigation, truth searching,[1] collision of the past and the present, and the unhinging of reality.[4] The end of the novel exposes human nature, belief, and certainty.[1]