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.

“The frame narrative is an age-old storytelling technique across cultures traceable to classic texts like the Panchatantra and, most popularly, A Thousand and One Nights. In The Keeper of Stories, Suffian Hakim has modernised this form to tell the familiar Singapore tragedy of displacement in the face of unrelenting development. Its stories within the novel suggest a sense of universality at play. Its appeal to the fantastical is not escapist but therapeutic. Suffian’s most serious book to date should be part of a reading list on making sense of trying times.”
—Nazry Bahrawi, senior lecturer, Singapore University of Technology and Design