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.

Winner of the 2020 Epigram Books Fiction Prize When a renegade prophet vanishes in a cloud of pigeons in Kuala Lumpur, chorister and first witness Gabriel finds himself press-ganged into a wild road trip down the Malaysian coast. Meanwhile, in a sleepy town by the sea, Lydia traces the links between her late grandaunt’s eccentric lover and her involvement in the Communist Emergency. As Lydia and Gabriel enter a shadowy mythology of serpents, Sufi saints and plainclothes gods, they must grapple with the theologies and histories they once trusted, in a country more perilously punk than they’d ever conceived of. Reader Reviews: "A dizzying tale of saints, heists, maybe-queens." —The Straits Times "Quite the debut, accomplished, deft, unabashed and exuberant." —Asian Review of Books "Author Joshua Kam’s debut book brings Asian mythology to the forefront." —The Sun Daily Malaysian author blurs myths and truths as you escape on a wild road trip ... This whimsical, rollercoaster ride of a book also carries a tale of old and new Malaysia colliding, with various figures from local history, politics and folklore coming together in an epic quest for the soul of the nation. —newsday24.com "In essence, (the novel) acts as a love letter to Malaysian folklore and history, showcasing an impressive degree of representation and imagination that never feels shoehorned into the narrative." —Bakchormeeboy "What a trip! This 21st-century adventure quest with an Islamic saint also brings us on a madcap tour through a multitude of Malaysian mythologies— Malay epics, Taoist pantheons, WW2/Emergency/Merdeka heroics, and more. Even more vitally, it gives us hope amidst the dire news of our era— political corruption, environmental devastation and bigotry—reassuring us that the human/divine spirit still flourishes in the late-capitalist tropics, and is ultimately destined to triumph over evil. An absolute delight, and truly, deliciously Malaysian.” —Ng Yi-Sheng, award-winning author of Lion City “Borgesian, even Manichean in spirit, with almost reverent borrowings from Nusantara mythologies to Abrahamic religiosity, this novel is a wild ride from start to finish, riffing on Malayan history, politics and folklore in a surprisingly redemptive arc, while remaining deeply interrogative about what it means to keep true to goodness in the ever-changing face of evil.” —Cyril Wong, two-time Singapore Literature Prize-winning author of This Side of Heaven

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.

Tales of horror have long been an integral part of Singapore’s storytelling culture, and they continue to dominate the imagination in the 21st century. But even as the horror folklore of yesteryear—along with its creatures, the pontianak and the jiangshi—recedes from collective memory, new fears have risen to take its place. Horror strikes deepest when it hits close to home. This collection aims to uncover the secret fears that lurk within the Singapore psyche, the unspoken fears often obscured by the lights and hubbub of modern city living. Whether it is the unknown skulking out there in the shadows or the existential angst that no amount of modernity can help shake off, we remain very much captive to the dark creatures that unceasingly stalk our minds. The 13 stories in this collection explores our discomfiture, our unease about the things we cannot see, understand or hope to easily overcome. Sometimes they are the things that threaten our humanity; yet at other times nothing appears to be of a greater threat to humankind than our very own humanity.

When young medusa Ria inadvertently turns an entire village to stone, she and her older sister flee to Nelroote, an underground settlement populated by other non-humans also marginalised by society. There she becomes their gatekeeper, hoping to seek redemption and love…until her friendship with a man from above threatens to dismantle the city she swore to protect.