Author Interview

Narratives on Nazism and Nationalism with Rahman Abbas

Critically acclaimed, award winning author Rahman Abbas needs no introduction. A Mumbai based fiction writer whose book Rohzin won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in 2018, Abbas is known to captivate the readers with unique storylines and unforgettable characters. Since his debut in 2004 with Nakhalistan ki Talaash ( The Search of an Oasis), he has penned one masterpiece after another. From winning awards to having his books translated into various foreign languages, he has done it all. Rohzin was not only the first Urdu novel to be discussed in Germany, it was also adopted as a part of Urdu curriculum in INALCO. Sometime last year, he won a research grant for his next novel and travelled to Europe. 

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Into Tunku Halim’s World of Haunted Mansions and Supernatural Powers

Tan Kaiyi in conversation with Tunku Halim: The Dark Lord of Malaysian Horror

In Tunku Halim’s illustrious career in horror writing, his beginning could be the strangest story of all in the history of the genre.

His first ever published work was Everything the condominium developer should have told you, but didn’t, containing his musings on buying condominiums during the Klang Valley real estate boom in the ‘90s. He followed that up with a sequel, Condominiums: Purchase Investment & Habitat, before publishing his first ever horror novel, Dark Demon Rising, in 1997. The hero of the story is Shazral, a city lawyer, who returns to his home kampong to attend his father’s funeral. It is there that he realises that he has been given a supernatural inheritance, in the form of a Hantu Penanggal, a Malay nocturnal vampiric entity.

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