Suffian Hakim

Harris Bin Potter and the Stoned Philosopher

The Minorities

The Keepers of Stories

Meet the four misfits living in one HDB flat. One is a Malay–Jew who is trying to get his father to come back as a ghost. Cantona is a promising Bangladeshi artist on the run from a construction company. Tights is a Chinese illegal immigrant with a Forrest Gump obsession. And Shanti is a gifted Indian lab technician hiding from her abusive husband. When a forlorn pontianak begins haunting them, the four friends find themselves embroiled in a surreal showdown that may just upend the world, or at least Singapore. Written in Suffian Hakim's trademark humour, The Minorities is a novel about those living on the edges of society and their soulful bond.

In post-independence Singapore, tradition clashes with modernity in this compelling tale of the importance of defining one's own story. When their father Sujakon comes home late one night, raving about bad people coming to take them away, siblings Zuzu and Hakeem are forced to leave everything behind and live in a tent at Changi Beach, with a secret community called Anak Bumi—the Children of the Earth. Here, they learn to live off the land and fend for themselves, and partake in a communal storytelling ritual under the stars called the Wayang Singa. But just as they’ve acclimatised to their new lives, their father disappears without a word and a strange man washes ashore warning of mortal danger from just offshore.

An illustrated edition of the author’s first novel—the hilarious, viral hit Harris bin Potter and the Stoned Philosopher, in which a bespectacled boy finds out that magic is disappearing in Singapore... and has to stop it. Harris bin Potter is an orphan who loves to play void deck football like any other Singaporean boy. But when he discovers he is a parceltongue (i.e., he can talk to boxes...er, parcels), his world changes. Harris learns about his magical lineage and enrols at the MOE-approved Hog-Tak-Halal-What School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There, he is sorted into the House of Fandi and gets caught up in an insane adventure to save Singapore’s magical folk from being turned into kosongs.

Suffian Hakim

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