Mr. Borges acknowledged in the preface that a book of this kind is unavoidably incomplete, but I can’t help fantasize about how he would have enjoyed adding Filipino lore to this updated menagerie of a hundred and twenty had our creatures traveled to South America and entered the perimeters of his consciousness.
An earlier edition invited readers to send names, descriptions, and conspicuous traits of their local monsters. I would have nominated the Tikbalang, the Aswang, the Manananggal, the Sigbin, and one Filipino president or two.
Although the latter species probably wouldn’t have qualified owing to being non-fictional.
The Book-Butterfly 