The novelist, artist and researcher at Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City, Philippines, chose the mythological creature of «Aswang» to work out a political and esthetic approach to indegenous knowledge of his country and broader island South-East-Asia. This approach searches for the conceptualization of conflict and transgression within the epic stories and cosmologies of Panay and Bicol, two regions of the country. His novels, historical anthologies, drawings and essays offer an opportunity to view and analyze the contemporary world from the perspective of working class, marginalized positions. To understand the work of Allan N. Derain, one has to consider late 19th-century intellectuals like Isabelo de los Reyes, the long tradition of marxism in the Philippines, as well as queer and feminist disccourse since the 1960ies. As translator of Derain’s novel «Aswanglaut/Das Meer der Aswang», the work of Édouard Glissant, Tiphaine Samoyault and Dipesh Chakrabarty on language, colonialism and translation has been very helpful.