THE MIDNIGHT CHILDREN: A VANISHING

The Midnight Children trilogy is a series of dark fantasy novels for children age 8-13 combining Asian mythology and Gothic elements. The characters, ten-year-old Min and twelve-year-old Zak are the main protagonists. In The Midnight Children: A Vanishing, Zak and Min’s father mysteriously disappears at breakfast and curious things then begin to happen to them. Min encounters two small creatures with spider-like legs, a doll that runs, talks and steals and Shaz, the shaman, who gives her a box with a finger bone inside. Zak is chased by a strange man on all fours in the shopping mall, flees from snakes that interrupt his homework and is visited by a ghostly old lady in his bedroom who happens to love matcha ice cream.Trying to find their father, they are transported to an eerie world called the MoonlightLands where oily creatures want to kidnap and eat them. The novel concludes withZak vanishing one night during dinner.Publication

About the Author

Tunku Halim is dubbed as Asia’s Stephen King and by delving into Malay myth, legends and folklore, his writing is often regarded as ‘World Gothic’. His novel, Dark Demon Rising (1997), was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award whilst his second novel, Vermillion Eye (2000), is used as a study text in The National University of Singapore’s Language and Literature course. He has also won first prize in a Fellowship of Australian Writers’ short story competition and has had three consecutive wins in Malaysia’s Popular-Star Readers’ Choice Awards between 2015 and 2017.

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