When Gen Xers in Singapore and Malaysia see the name ‘Othman Wok’, the image that springs to mind is a pair of creepy oversize eyes peeking out from behind some houses – the cover of Othman’s 1991 bestseller, Macabre Tales of Singapore and Malaysia in the 50’s (proud owner here) – rather than ‘pioneering politician’. But that he was, being Singapore’s first minister for social affairs, among other appointments. During the 1950s Othman was a reporter who wrote weekly tales for a Malay newspaper and magazine, which made him a household name. When his political career took off, the writing stopped. It wasn’t until the 1980s that his stories started appearing again.
During the 1990s and 2000s, his works were translated into English and made available to a wider public, with several anthologies aimed at the regional pulp horror-fiction market. Of them, this new collection is probably the most literary-minded.
The stories, drawn from the 1950s and 1980s, range from punchy page-turners about a pair of severed feet that hop off a mortician’s table to more involved adventures featuring avenging Dayak warrior-corpses whose tombs were disturbed – cheerful entertainment turned out by a storyteller with a knack for the singular chilling image. Some lodge in the mind for years. (I’m looking at you, shivering, wet visitor to ‘The Old House’.) The tales paint a vivid picture of 1950s and 60s Singapore, when modernity collided with older spiritual beliefs. In ‘The Golden Lantern’, the shaman Pawang Kassim curses three brothers for destroying his business in talismans and charms. The folksy settings of kampungs, plantations and trishaws will also strike a more generally nostalgic note.
As for the brisk, functional style, I’d put it down to the realities of working to deadline. The anthology’s editor, Ng Yi-Sheng, writes that Othman did not have the respect of the Malay literati during the 1950s, so ‘it is sweetly ironic that these stories have stood the test of time’.
A Mosque in the Jungle: Classic Ghost Stories by Othman Wok, edited by Ng Yi-Sheng, is published by Epigram Books, S$18.90 (paperback)
From the Autumn 2021 issue of ArtReview Asia
