20 October 2025, 6:15 pm, by AAI Webmaster

Photo: Cover "Das Meer der Aswang" | Unionsverlag, cropped

We kindly invite you to this book presentation on Monday, October 20th, 2025, at 18:15 – 19:45 h (CEST/MESZ).

Book Presentation: "Das Meer der Aswang"

Speakers:
    Allan N. Derain (author)
    Annette Hug (translator)

Date:
    Monday, October 20, 2025

Time:
    18:15 – 19:45 p.m. (MESZ/CEST)

Location:
    Asia-Africa-Institute (AAI)
    University of Hamburg
    Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Flügel Ost ("East Wing"), room O-121
    20146 Hamburg

Languages:
    book presentation in German and Tagalog
    discussion in German and English

Open to public! – No entrance fee!

About the book:

One morning, the girl Luklak can no longer get up – she transforms into a crocodile. Into an aswang, a mythical creature of the Philippines. Her father seeks assistance from the wise men, but amidst spirit beings, zealous priests, colonial rulers, and spirit birds, the search turns into an intoxicating odyssey.

About the author:

Allan N. Derain is an author and teaches creative writing, art history, and Philippine literature at the Ateneo de Manila University. He is also the director of the AILAP (Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices). Several of his books have won the Philippine National Book Award. He lives in Manila.

About the translator:

Annette Hug was born in Zurich in 1970. She studied history in Zurich and Women's and Development Studies in Manila. After working as a lecturer and union secretary, she has been a freelance author since January 2015. Her third novel, "William Tell in Manila" (Wunderhorn, 2016), focuses on a translator: the Filipino writer José Rizal, who translated Friedrich Schiller's "William Tell" into Tagalog in 1886. She was awarded a Swiss Literature Prize for this novel in 2017. Hug's column, "Ein Traum der Welt," appears biweekly in the weekly newspaper WOZ. Since 2024, she has published translations from Filipino (Tagalog) into German: poems by Luna Sicat Cleto, a historical novella by Isabelo de los Reyes, as well as the novels "Das Meer der Aswang" by Allan N. Derain, and "Die 70er" by Lualhati Bautista.

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