My father’s passion was reading. Our favorite weekend activity as a family was to visit the newsstand to buy magazines.
My father’s short stories will be republished soon by Fixi Retro.
I’m lucky to come from a family that loved books and writing.
My grandfather loved poetry and owned a small second hand bookshop in Singapore. My late father Hamzah Hussin, helped him in the shop as a young boy, and he grew up to become a figure in the Malay literary world.
My father became a journalist and writer, penning and publishing short stories and novels. He then joined Cathay Keris Organisation, one of the pioneer studios that produced Malay films, as a scriptwriter/ public relations officer. He later went to live in Malaysia to continue to contribute to the film industry and also to teach at FINAS Film Academy.
He was always generous with his knowledge, and I knew that he cherished the opportunity to teach, and the interaction with the students and their ideas.
Most of the Malay films of his era are still widely viewed, and thus my father’s screenplays are still intact. However, some of his literary works are not so readily available.
The good news is that Amir Muhammad, Malaysia’s well-known author, filmmaker and publisher, has located three of my father’s published short stories and has compiled them into a book. Amir and his company Fixi Retro will launch the book on November 21 at Ilham’s Gallery in Kuala Lumpur.
I feel very grateful and pleased to share my father’s work with more people, and I’m sure he would be too.
If you’re in Malaysia or Singapore, I would like to invite you to the launch. Amir will also talk about Malay movies in the 60s at the event. More details on the event and the venue are at this page.
Building Bridges 
Congratulations! Would love to be there for the launch. You were indeed fortunate to come from a family who loved books and writing. What a wonderful legacy…
Thank you so much for your kind words.
What wonderful news.
Thank you, really appreciate your support.
Congrats dear. How wonderful. 🙂
Thank you, Celestine. 🙂
Congrats Sharifah!! i can’t make it for the event, but will waiting for it to come down to Singapore. will it, or has it?
Thanks so much, Susie. Plans for Singapore are not fixed yet. Will definitely let you know. 🙂
I really enjoyed the launch. Amir Muhammad is remarkable in his painstaking and thoughtful arrangements for the day.
Amir regaled us with anecdotes your Dad shared with him of famous movie stars of the 60’s like P Ramlee and diva Siput Sarawak. That put everyone at ease. There was a lot of laughter. He had movie clips where your Dad was named playwright in the credits and one clip where your Dad actually acted as a playwright in a scene with the inimitable Siput Sarawak. Many in the crowd seemed to be in their 30s and early 40s and probably have not seen these olde, olde black and white Cathay Kris movies.
What is even more interesting to me, was the revelation by Amir and two of your Dad’s students that your Dad was a man ahead of his time in the themes of his short stories. I believe from the discussion that the current young Malaysian “indie” publishers writing a “new genre” of Malay writing, were in fact inspired by your Dad’s work. He stood out in that period as a man who went out on a limb, taking a course different from his contemporaries, who in the fashion of the day, had story-lines on nationalism and nation-building in a newly independent Malaysia. There were no accolades for him. Amir also shared his journey of how he unearthed two of your Dad’s stories for this book. That edition was full of typos and he had that corrected but maintained the “Malay writing style of the 60’s”. I share in the pleasure that a new generation of Malaysians respected the path your Dad had taken and that he doggedly wrote against the odds. This new genre so to speak have taken Malaysia by storm, if I may say so and books are flying off the shelves. My favourite story in this book is Perempuan Gusti or Girl Wrestler, which is unheard of for a Malay woman, even today, 58 years after independence. Amir introduced this story as a breaking of stereotypes: an unmarried Malay woman, and a wrestler. In the back-cover, she surprised her would-be husband by “knowing how to kiss (on the cheek)”. My favourite episode in that story, was when she was angered when the kadi (official who solemnises marriage of Muslims under Muslim law) had the male audacity (totally natural for that period and probably even now), to inquire if she is a virgin at the time of the solemnisation. Yessss, your Dad was a man ahead of his time.
Glad you enjoyed the launch. Thanks so much for your support. And thank you for taking the time to share your insight and appreciation of Amir’s efforts and my father’s journey as a writer.