The Republic of Small Hours | Noel Jestoni Ebuenga

Description

Step into the small hours, and witness the lives that keep it alive.

The Republic of Small Hours is a verse novella that opens a window into a city that never truly sleeps. Across its shifting hours, it paints intimate portraits of the unseen and the overlooked: nurses counting heartbeats, vendors singing to empty streets, children dreaming beneath overpasses, and workers finding solidarity in whispered songs.

Blending English narrative with Filipino dialogue, prayers, and street-born mantras, the novella captures the rhythm, exhaustion, and quiet resilience of urban life. It is a meditation on the small heroism of ordinary people–the fleeting joys, subtle revolts, and enduring hopes that pulse through the city at night.

This is not a city of monuments.

It is a city of souls.