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

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.

Nick Joaquin is widely considered the most important Filipino writer in English. He was born in Manila in 1917 and received a scholarship to study at a Dominican monastery in Hong Kong. Upon his return, he took a job at the Philippines Free Press, beginning a long and successful career as a writer. A novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, journalist and biographer, he was honoured for his work as a National Artist of the Philippines. His works include the novel The Woman Who Had Two Navels, a play, A Portrait of the Artist as a Filipino, three collections of short fiction, two volumes of poetry, and numerous works of nonfiction. He died in 2004.