How Hanna handles hysteria in her latest work

MALAYSIANSKINI | Writer Hanna Alkaf has been making waves of late… again.

This time, the recognition came when her young adult (YA) novel "The Girl and the Ghost" was included in a recommendation list for middle school readers published by the Oprah Book Club.

There has been some recognition for Malaysian writers writing in English, with names like Tan Twan Eng, Tash Aw, Saras Manickam, Zen Cho, Preeta Samarasan, and Aishah Zainal among those literary critics acknowledged in recent years.

For Hanna, this latest nod couldn’t have come at a better time as her latest book, "The Hysterical Girls of St Bernadette’s", was released this week.

Not one to shy away from challenging topics, this new work sees Hanna take on the phenomenon of mass hysteria in a convent school.

It explores the complicated relationships between girls in...