Links to print interviews and TV appearances.
The Everyday People of Singapore (2017)
“I do enjoy humour, but I also enjoy the deeper, greyer side of existence too. People might assume this shift in tone is my attempt at being a more serious writer, but how people perceive me is entirely up to them; I just know that I have many stories I want to tell.”
“As a novelist, I’m more of an entertainer than a philosopher. So if you’ve laughed or cried or were moved in any way by what I’ve written, then I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. But hey, as I said, we’re only in the middle of act two of my origin story. Maybe I can properly answer this question as we get into act three.”
The Minorities (2018) stems from the period in his life when he was becoming an adult. “I realised that what I was born into—the colour of my skin, my faith, my spirituality—flavours my experience of life.” The book is about four people, two of them illegal immigrants, living in a Yishun flat haunted by a pontianak. “I used the idea of the supernatural as a metaphor for the people who we pretend don’t exist, the people who are suffering to whom we turn a blind eye, because we’re enjoying our middle- to upper-class life.”
SUFFIAN HAKIM 