After the race riots of her debut book, The Weight Of Our Sky, and the supernatural element of her second book, The Girl And The Ghost, Hanna Alkaf is back with another story, set in the world of competitive Scrabble.
In Queen Of The Tiles, it is character Najwa’s first competition since her best friend’s death. While she struggles to come to terms with Trina’s untimely passing, the other teens are scrambling to take over the now unoccupied Scrabble throne.
Then, Trina’s formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages hinting that there is more to her death than meets the eye.
“While Queen Of The Tiles is a murder mystery, at its core is also a story about grief and loss, about memory and complicated relationships. Najwa’s greatest strengths are her intelligence and her loyalty, and they are both also her greatest weaknesses; her intelligence means she hates to feel helpless and in the dark about anything, and her loyalty – to Trina in particular – means she may often ignore or forgive her flaws, particularly after her death when questioning their friendship feels almost like a betrayal,” says Hanna in a recent interview.
Process of excavation
She started writing this book right after turning in The Weight Of Our Sky in 2017, a long journey that saw six different drafts and countless half-written versions.
“I couldn’t seem to ever get it right. In hindsight, I think I just didn’t have the skills yet to make the story what I wanted and needed it to be. The most challenging aspect of writing this book was really, well, writing the book. It is a mystery, which is complicated in itself, but it was also a process of excavation to unearth the real shape of the narrative itself, one that took a long time to figure out.
“I hope readers take from it exactly what they need, whether it is just a story that entertains you for a couple of hours, or the idea that grief isn’t linear and that there is no right way to grieve, or just the idea of seeing a girl in a tudung on the cover. What I enjoyed the most was weaving in the wordplay and gameplay and Scrabble itself throughout the book; Najwa thinks through things through the lens of Scrabble, and that was difficult, but incredibly rewarding when I got it right,” she says.
It is a world that Hanna knows, having played competitive Scrabble for a bit as a teen.
Before she was part of this, she tagged along as her brother was ferried to and from local weekend tournaments with his Scrabble team.
“I lived through the reality of studying word lists and counting tiles and calculating points. And so what inspired this setting was just a self-indulgent desire to write as much word ‘nerdiness’ as possible into a book, particularly as I’d never seen competitive Scrabble as a backdrop to a book before,” notes Hanna.
Her books are written for children and teenagers, a choice that is influenced by her own experience with books while younger.
“I write for young readers because when I think of the books that shaped who I am now, I think of books that I read as a kid or teen. Those of us who grew up reading in English in Malaysia, at least back then – I think we grew accustomed to looking for bits and pieces of ourselves in characters who looked nothing like us, who had very different names, in far flung countries. I think there is power in seeing yourself and your communities reflected back at you in the fiction you read, and I didn’t want my own kids to have to go hunting for themselves the way I did,” she shares.
Finding a rhythm
The Weight Of The Sky was the winner of the 2019 Freeman Awards in the Young Adult/High School Literature category.
The Girl And The Ghost was a Kirkus Prize 2020 finalist.
Hanna also has an entry in Once Upon An Eid, a short story collection in 2020 edited by Aisha Saeed and S.K. Ali, that showcases global Muslim voices writing about this religious holiday.
After the Queen Of The Tiles, she has two other books in the works, The Grimoire Of Grave Fates and an upcoming middle grade book. In The Grimoire of Grave Fates, to be published by Delacorte Press, a professor at a wizarding school is murdered and the students join forces to track down his killer. Created by Hanna and Margaret Owen (The Merciful Crow), each chapter in this fantasy novel, written by different authors, portrays a different character’s perspective.
The contributing authors include Cam Montgomery, Hafsah Faizal, Jessica Lewis, Julian Winters, Karuna Riazi, Kat Cho, Preeti Chhibber, Victoria Lee and Yamile Saied Mendez.
The other yet-to-be-titled book is a Malaysian folklore twist on Little Red Riding Hood, where a 13-year-old girl meets a talking tiger who is trapped in the Langkawi jungle by a curse.
Both titles are slated for a 2023 release.
It is an impressive list in such a short time span, something that Hanna doesn’t take for granted.
“I have been very lucky to have ideas that publishers seem interested in, and very privileged to have the time to be able to work on those ideas, as well as a support system that allows me to write. Because that’s the thing, it is very difficult to write for a living unless you can afford to write for a living. That is a privilege that many, many authors more talented than me don’t have,” she says.
These days, when she is not chasing a deadline, she is spending time with her children or working on another art project.
“When I have a moment to myself, I am reading, or painting, or watching BTS. After two books, the most valuable lesson I have learned is that once the book is out in the world, it is no longer mine, it is yours – it belongs to the readers, who will bring their experiences and interpretations to it, none of which I can control. All I can do is focus on the next book, and the next, and the next, and try to make each one better than the last in some way,” she concludes.
Queen Of The Tiles, published by Salaam Reads/ Simon and Schuster, is available in bookstores now.
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