You know you’ve made it big as a writer when you’ve been published by the Penguin Group, one of the leading publishers in the world. And you’re on a different level when you’ve been published by Penguin Classics, an imprint that focuses on important members of the Western canon. National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin joins other literary greats as his works will be included in its lineup.
His works The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic, and A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino will be included.
Joaquin will be the third Filipino to be published by Penguin Classics, after National Hero Jose Rizal and poet Jose Garcia Villa.
Elda Rotor, the Filipina editorial director of Penguin Classics, told CNN Philippines, “For Nick Joaquin, his reputation and legacy spoke for themselves.”
Meanwhile, Penguin’s website said, “His work meditates on the questions and challenges of the Filipino individual’s new freedom after centuries of colonialism, exploring folklore, centuries-old Catholic rites, the Spanish colonial past, magical realism, and baroque splendor and excess.”
The books will be published in April 2017, in time for Joaquin’s 100 birth anniversary. It will be the author’s first US publication, and will feature a paperback version and an ebook. Both will have a foreword by writer Gina Apostol and an introduction by historian Vicente L. Rafael.
Joaquin will join writers like Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Franz Kafka, and many more.
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