Mara finds herself brainstorming an ad campaign for Free Maxi Pads, with a little help from the menstruation-eating hag of her childhood. Jamal falls in love with the rich and powerful Bambang, but it is the era of the smiling general and his naivety might get him recruited to Bambang's brutal cause. Solihin would give anything to make dangdut singer Salimah his wife — anything at all. 

In the globally connected and fast-developing Indonesia of Apple and Knife, taboos, inversions, sex, and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix full of pointed critiques and bloody mutilations. Women carve out a place for themselves in this world, finding ways to subvert norms or enacting brutalities on themselves and each other.

Readers will receive new insights into life as a woman in Indonesian society — seemingly different from the mainstream Australian experience, but maybe not so different after all.

"This sharp, superbly-written collection of stories draws from myth, fairy-tale and horror, weaving together the familiar and the uncanny to eerie and macabre effect. The women in Paramaditha's tales are by turns vengeful, seductive, terrifying, and powerful, and the collection as a whole is unapologetically feminist, confronting taboo topics and exploring gendered power dynamics and Indonesian society and culture with dark humour. These are stories that will linger with you. Highly, highly recommended" — Tenille, Mary Who? Bookshop

"Paramaditha's stories are shockingly bold and macabrely funny, powerfully defamiliarising the cultural lore of patriarchy. What makes them special is their lack of interest in representing women as victims – here, the taboo of feminist anger is flagrantly and entertainingly broken" — The Saturday Paper

"Intan Paramaditha, who mixes fairy tales and gothic ghost stories with feminist and political issues, shakes up her readers, showing that her fiction is not beholden to a single interpretation. Her short stories reveal that the most terrifying thing in life is not one of the supernatural ghosts that populate her work, but human prejudice" — Eka Kurniawan, author of Beauty is a Wound and Man Tiger