Ep. 15: Here’s a funny story | Some Scuffs

Good fiction, and a sense of humour, can carry hard-hitting truths.

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What would the Harry Potter series look like if Harry was a Malay Muslim boy? What would happen if you tried to get closure with your dead father by conjuring his ghost, and ended up attracting a pontianak?

Writer Suffian Hakim thinks a lot about these questions. In his curious mind, the fantastical worlds that exist in the fiction he loves, and the Singaporean culture he’s immersed in collide in the most delightful and bizarre ways to produce stories that are true to our roots and heritage but full of mystical impossibility and refreshing humour.

In this episode, the author of the wildly successful Harry Potter parody Harris bin Potter and the Stoned Philosopher talks about how he developed his writer’s voice, and how humorous fiction can be used to communicate deep and profound life lessons. He also shares the inspiration behind his latest book, The Minorities, and his unorthodox path to becoming a full-time writer.

Find The Minorities by Suffian Hakim at Epigram Books, Kinokuniya and other local bookstores.