A Mosque in the Jungle

by Othman Wok

Sandi Tan’s The Black Isle, Nuraliah Norasid’s The Gatekeeper, Neon Yang’s Tensorate series, Rachel Heng’s Suicide Club and Suffian Hakim’s The Minorities. I began playing the role of amateur literary

mainly working the crime beat but occasionally venturing into the depths of jungles to cover the RAF troops’ capture of Communists.

Othman to write a weekly series of horror stories

before he joined the People’s Action Party in in 1954. Why were these horror stories

Malay cultural renaissance—the

realism in their writing.8 Many of them viewed ghost stories as shameful artefacts of a less civilised age, best to be abandoned as the community progressed into the future.

All we met at nightfall was a band of communist terrorists.

And what did I see in front of me? Nothing. It was just a blank sheet of paper. Blank, like the emptiness that was the old man’s life.

the little flame lit up, he raised his hand,