The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic

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 Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas 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 splendor and excess.

This collection features his best-known story, The Woman Who Had Two Navels, centered on Philippine emigrants living in Hong Kong and later expanded into a novel, the much-anthologized stories May Day Eve and The Summer Solstice and a canonic play, A Portrait of the Artist as a Filipino. As Penguin Classics previously launched his countryman Jose Rizal to a wide audience, now Joaquin will find new readers with the first American collection of his work.