The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic
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Summary
Nick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. With the post-colonial sensibilities of Junot Diaz, Teju Cole, and Jhumpa Lahiri and an ironic perspective of colonial history resonant with Marques and Llosa, Joaquin is a long-neglected writer ready to join the ranks of the world classics. His work meditates on the questions and challenges of the Filipino individual's new freedom after a long history of colonialism, exploring folklore, centuries-old Catholic rites, the Spanish colonial past, magical realism, and baroque splendour and excess. This collection features his best-known story, 'The Woman Who Had Two Navels,' centred on Philippine emigrants living in Hong Kong and later expanded into a novel, the much-anthologised story 'May Day Eve,' and a canonical play, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino.
Reviews
Nick Joaquin is akin to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the extravagant, surreal imagery of his stories, the fatalistic humor, the intricate weaving of history and memory, the spiritual and the sensual, the personal and the political. He is a writer deserving wider recognition, whose magical Macondo was the very real Philippines, in all its beauty, splendor and ruin. Behold this collection of marvels
Jessica Hagedorn