The author of Harris bin Potter and the Stoned Philosopher talks about how his grandmother inspired his new novel, and how he has used his writing to explore his identity as a Malay-Muslim in Singapore.

It's easy to see that Suffian Hakim is a funny guy. He is, after all, the mind behind Harris bin Potter and the Stoned Philosopher, the viral internet hit that Suffian first published on his blog in 2009, the beloved parody that placed a hapless Malay boy wizard — whose parents mysteriously died from "some infernal satay from Johor" — in the Hog-Tak-Halal-What School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

But beneath that good humour lies a deeper desire to analyse his own lived experiences as a Malay-Muslim in Singapore. "I dealt with it using humour, because when it came to a critical analysis of the Malay-Muslim experience, I was raised in a ‘If you don’t talk about it or question it, it doesn’t exist’ sort of environment," says Suffian.

The Keepers of Stories.jpg

Of Harris, he adds: "I was starting to consider, in a critical way, that my being Malay-Muslim in Singapore brings with it certain baggage and limitations that my friends of other races might not experience."

His latest book continues that train of thought. Set in 1978 Singapore, The Keepers of Stories follows two young siblings who meet a homeless community at Changi Beach, the Anak Bumi. They practice a storytelling ritual under the stars, one used to pass down legends, stories, and histories — just as his late grandmother once did for him.

"When I was growing up, we were a family of 6 squeezed into a small flat in Bukit Panjang, and I had to share a room with my grandma," says Suffian. "Every night, she would tell me these amazing, fantastical stories before we went to sleep. She was my first storyteller — she was my Keeper of Stories."

Image courtesy of Keith Premchand

You've mentioned that you tapped on "a deep well of personal grief" for the book. Where did that come from, and what made you want to make yourself so vulnerable?

I have to say it’s my most personal book to date, and tonally, a huge departure from Harris bin Potter and The Minorities.

I lost my grandmother Fatimah in 2016. She practically raised me when I was a child, because both my parents were working. I was my grandmother’s grandson. I was her favourite. When I was growing up, we were a family of 6 squeezed into a small flat in Bukit Panjang and I had to share a room with my grandma. Every night, she would tell me these amazing, fantastical stories before we went to sleep. She would send my mind on a grand adventure into the infinite. She was my first storyteller. She was my Keeper of Stories. When she passed in 2016, I was in Bali. I couldn’t get a flight back in time to see her. It’s the great regret of my life.

It was in November 2018, on the second anniversary of her death, that I started making the first notes that would eventually evolve into The Keepers of Stories. I just sat there and realised I wanted to write an elaborate tribute to my grandmother.

Suffian with his grandmother and family.

I think, in a profound way, the book is my attempt to put together the many incredible facets of her soul into something black and white. I put in the book the stories she told me, both the imaginary and the anecdotal. The character of Nyai Timah was based on her. My grandmother’s mind was made of coruscating universes, and this book was an attempt to capture a miniscule fraction of that.

I honestly don’t see it as vulnerability. Every book and story I’ve written is an exercise in baring my soul. I disguise it with jokes and delightfully improbable characters and situations, but it’s there if you know how and where to look.

Harris bin Potter was arguably the book that shot you to fame. Now, almost 10 years after it was first released, what do you think when you look back on it?

Working on Harris bin Potter was such a character-building experience. I self-published it before Epigram Books picked it up, meaning I did everything. I wrote it. I edited it. I hired a cover designer. I reached out to retailers. I got rejected by retailers. I delivered my books to the few retailers who said yes (back then), loading boxes into MRT trains and getting weird stares. I wrote press releases and sent it out to publications.

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I followed up when most of them didn’t get back to me. I sat through hours of lectures from my parents and relatives telling me this was all a pipe dream and perhaps I might enjoy teaching instead. I’ve gone through break-ups in that time because, “I need to get my shit together and figure out what I really want to do with my life” after I stated that writing that book was exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t have a mentor or role model. I questioned myself, over and over again, if I was doing the right thing.

Honestly, it was a difficult time. I carried all of that alone for 2 years, before my now-wife Shelby and I started dating and she helped lift a huge load off my shoulders.  That was the first time I thought this might work: to have someone believe in me. The second time was when Kinokuniya picked it up. To see my own book in a bookstore I’ve frequented since secondary school just blew my mind. 

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More on Harris bin Potter: How much of the book's Singaporean Malay-Muslim flavour did you draw from your own life?

I first wrote Harris bin Potter during a particularly boring media management lecture back in school. Back then, I was starting to consider, in a critical way, that my being Malay-Muslim in Singapore brings with it certain baggage and limitations that my friends of other races might not experience.

I dealt it with humour because when it came to a critical analysis of the Malay-Muslim experience, I was raised in a ‘If you don’t talk about it or question it, it doesn’t exist’ sort of environment. My vocabulary for those types of discussions was not sophisticated enough for me to explore it in any other way. So I guess I have to attribute Harris bin Potter’s existence and success to the fact that, as a younger man, I was a bit of a dumbass.

It wasn’t my only exercise in cross-parodying the Malay-Muslim reality in Singapore with works of Western popular culture back then. I also wrote Little Red Riding Tudung and Three Shades of Brown (a parody of 50 Shades of Grey). The latter was a lot of fun to write because I cross-parodied Western sexual conventions (such as the idea of calling your partner ‘Daddy’) with Malay sense and sensibilities and my own budding sexuality. But it was Harris bin Potter that really took off.

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Malay-Muslim culture is a frequent theme in your works. What makes you want to explore this?

My career as an author has coincided with a deeper exploration of my own cultural and ethnic identity. My books are each an exercise in studying the intersection between Malay language and culture and collective sensibilities with the Western popular culture, ideas and philosophies that I grew up with and love. So I don’t think I’m putting a spotlight on Malay culture per se, but I think I’m holding it up within the context of modern, globalised Singapore. 

In The Keepers of Stories, for example, I was exploring Malay culture in the context of the Singapore in which my parents and uncles and aunts took their first steps towards self-actualisation. The story’s set in the late 70s, so there are discussions around moving from kampong/village life to being sandwiched in a HDB flats. There are discussions around drug abuse. There are discussions around the freedom to roam and live off the land of your nation, against the modern city-state’s control of your movements by demarcating where you can live and sleep, and where you work, and how you can organise as a community.

I don’t delve that much into these issues in the book, because ultimately, they’re just small details in the backdrop, while Hakeem and Zuzu’s journey towards the end of their innocence play in the foreground.  Even so, the way they lose their innocence - through witnessing violence, through being subject to violence, through performing it themselves, through being regarded as inferior, through having to question their place in the state, through the indignities of lower to lower-middle class life, through loving and losing - it is how many older Malay people I know have shed their childhood. 

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Ultimately, what do you hope readers will take away from your stories?

Oh man, how do I answer this? I envy writers whose works carry a profound message. I don’t think mine do.  If they do, it is purely inadvertent, I assure you. I’m no Alfian Sa’at or Cyril Wong or Amanda Lee Koe. I honestly started writing these stories to make people laugh and so girls might like me more.

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.

Suffian Hakim draws from "a deep well of personal grief" for his latest book

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