About the author:
Allan N. Derain the author of several books, including Iskrapbuk (UP Press), The Next Great Tagalog Novel at iba pang Kuwento (UP Press), Aswanglaut (Ateneo de Manila University Press) and Ang Banal na Aklat ng mga Kumag (Cacho and Anvil) which won the Carlos Palanca Memorial Grand Prize Award, The Reader’s Choice Award, and the National Book Award. He edited the aswang anthology May Tiktik sa Bubong, May Sigbin sa Silong which won the National Book Award and the Gintong Aklat Award. An Assistant Professor both in the Kagawaran ng Filipino and Fine Arts Department of Ateneo de Manila University, he teaches Creative Writing, Art Appreciation, and Philippine Literature and also currently serves as the director of AILAP (Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices).

About the book: 
Original publication: Ateneo de Manila University Press, Quezon City  
ISBN: 139786214481057
244 pages
Language: Tagalog

In his latest novel, Allan N. Derain takes his play on Filipino epics and uncertain origins to dizzying heights. It all begins simply: a girl in a prototypical coastal village, sometime during the Spanish colonial period (1564 and 1898), must cremate her mother's illegitimate child - a fish-like sibling. In doing so, it attracts a wide variety of figures from the spirit world and healers. A metamorphosis takes place. In the course of the novel, the girl transforms into a crocodile, which is also an aswang - a man-eating hybrid creature subsumed to the class of witches by the Spanish priests. 
A witty and angry manifesto of contemporary aswangs comes as a prelude to the story. This is how the narrator, looking into the past from a modern metropolis, reveals himself. As the novel progresses, he shifts in tone from elderly storyteller  to parodist, from chanting shaman to contemporary Cervantes, intertwining the thread of the narrative by ever new stories into the tales. Thus, the drama of the girl Luklak is embedded in the decline of a village where the magic of a Catholic priest tries to assert itself against the animistic beliefs of the inhabitants. The priest is defeated because he fails to avert the greatest danger: An attack by pirates from the sultanates to the south. A gigantic sea battle, in which sea monsters and flocks of cranes finally intervene, precedes Luklak's final transformation. 
What Allan N. Derain conjures up in fantastic tableaux and parodic aperçus is no paradisiacal Eden, no great matriarchal harmony, and no Eldorado of genuinely male heroes. Derain fictionalizes a village in which a man can also be an animal or a ghost. Daydreams, nightmares, illnesses, ritual dances, and drunkenness stimulate these transitions. Just before the doom, for example, a flock of ghost birds fantasizes about how to win the battle of the ancient beings against Christianity, Islam and the Chinese emperor. They find no answer. In the surviving aswang and their guardian spirits, however, the author seems to hold out a hope: The unredeemed promise of a humanity that does not solidify into contempt and demarcation for "inferiors" of all kinds. 
In this way, Derain intervenes in current global debates: the relationship of powerful civilizations to indigenous communities, of humans to other species, and thus the question of what progress actually consists of. 
The book is illustrated with drawings by the author himself. They are not necessary for comprehending the story, but they give an impression of the witty handling of the carefully researched mythological figures. 

Translator Annette Hug presented the book in our pitching session on 3 March 2022.

For further information please contact:

Annette Hug
On this website
E-Mail: [email protected]
Website: www.annettehug.ch