Overview

A dazzling, provocative debut story collection from celebrated Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha, putting fierce female characters centre stage in brilliantly funny and sharp twists on fairy tale. ‘Dark, subversive... Here are fairy tales and myths reworked with a feminist bent’ Tatler Inspired by horror fiction, myths and fairy tales, Apple and Knife is an unsettling ride that swerves into the supernatural to explore the dangers and power of occupying a female body in today’s world. These stories set in the Indonesian everyday – in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns, on dangdut stages – reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. This is subversive feminist horror at its best, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave. Dark, humorous, and vividly realised, Apple and Knife brings together taboos, inversions, sex and death in a heady, intoxicating mix.

Full Product Details

9781784709792

Table of Contents

Reviews

Sometimes disturbing, often humorous, but always unapologetically feminist... a deeply, brilliantly macabre, visceral collection which pulls very few punches. -- Mariella Frostrup * BBC Radio 4 Open Book * Dark, subversive... Here are fairytales and myths reworked with a feminist bent, with plenty of blood, revenge and horror thrown in... A fun - if unsettling - collection. * Tatler * A sharply subversive feminist retread of fairy tales and myths. These darkly humorous, sometimes viscerally violent tales are inspired by horror stories, exploring taboos and the female body in the modern world. * i * Apple and Knife delivers a short sharp suite of tales. It would be tempting to describe the volume as feminist horror, though undercurrents of violence and misogyny, myth and madness don't stop it smouldering with black comedy and flickering into moments of unexpected victory. The author throws us into the cauldron of contemporary Indonesia through an eclectic cast of characters - we encounter everyone from musicians to corporate high-flyers to witches. * Sydney Morning Herald * Catalogued here are powerful, disobedient women who misbehave, following their own desires over the dictates of society. These are women with swagger, and as such this is a collection for Lilith, not for Eve... Paramaditha's nimble work ducks and dives, weaving the campy, gothic, and visceral into the weft of societally-conditioned expectations of femininity in order to create warped tapestries of female deviance, going some way towards queer depictions of women in all their transforming, glitchy glory. * Strange Horizons *

A phantasmagorical collection of short stories and reimagined tales, not unlike Angela Carter and Carmen Maria Machado. -- Matthew Janney * Guardian * Sometimes disturbing, often humorous, but always unapologetically feminist… a deeply, brilliantly macabre, visceral collection which pulls very few punches. * BBC Radio 4 Open Book * Dark, subversive... Here are fairytales and myths reworked with a feminist bent, with plenty of blood, revenge and horror thrown in... A fun – if unsettling – collection. * Tatler * A sharply subversive feminist retread of fairy tales and myths. These darkly humorous, sometimes viscerally violent tales are inspired by horror stories, exploring taboos and the female body in the modern world. * i * These short stories are fiercely funny and feminist and mix the everyday with the supernatural. * Red *

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. As far as I'm concerned, only writers of genius are able to convey a layered and nuanced world, and Paramaditha is one of them. -- Eka Kurniawan A sharply subversive feminist retread of fairy tales and myths. These darkly humorous, sometimes viscerally violent tales are inspired by horror stories, exploring taboos and the female body in the modern world. * i * Dark, subversive... Here are fairytales and myths reworked with a feminist bent, with plenty of blood, revenge and horror thrown in... A fun - if unsettling - collection. * Tatler * Catalogued here are powerful, disobedient women who misbehave, following their own desires over the dictates of society. These are women with swagger, and as such this is a collection for Lilith, not for Eve... Paramaditha's nimble work ducks and dives, weaving the campy, gothic, and visceral into the weft of societally-conditioned expectations of femininity in order to create warped tapestries of female deviance, going some way towards queer depictions of women in all their transforming, glitchy glory. * Strange Horizons * Intan Paramaditha has turned the fairy tale on its head. Instead of helpless maidens, these fables are bursting with fierce and fabulous females, determined to exact justice in an unjust world. As the enigmatic title suggests, the writing is juicy and incisive. Every story is a gem and, as with all good fairy tales, there are important lessons to be learned. -- Melanie Cheng

Catalogued here are powerful, disobedient women who misbehave, following their own desires over the dictates of society. These are women with swagger, and as such this is a collection for Lilith, not for Eve... Paramaditha's nimble work ducks and dives, weaving the campy, gothic, and visceral into the weft of societally-conditioned expectations of femininity in order to create warped tapestries of female deviance, going some way towards queer depictions of women in all their transforming, glitchy glory. * Strange Horizons * Apple and Knife delivers a short sharp suite of tales. It would be tempting to describe the volume as feminist horror, though undercurrents of violence and misogyny, myth and madness don't stop it smouldering with black comedy and flickering into moments of unexpected victory. The author throws us into the cauldron of contemporary Indonesia through an eclectic cast of characters - we encounter everyone from musicians to corporate high-flyers to witches. * Sydney Morning Herald * A sharply subversive feminist retread of fairy tales and myths. These darkly humorous, sometimes viscerally violent tales are inspired by horror stories, exploring taboos and the female body in the modern world. * i * Dark, subversive... Here are fairytales and myths reworked with a feminist bent, with plenty of blood, revenge and horror thrown in... A fun - if unsettling - collection. * Tatler * Sometimes disturbing, often humorous, but always unapologetically feminist... a deeply, brilliantly macabre, visceral collection which pulls very few punches. -- Mariella Frostrup * BBC Radio 4 Open Book *

Author Information

Intan Paramaditha is a writer and academic. Her novel The Wandering (Harvill Secker, Penguin Random House UK), translated from the Indonesian by Stephen J. Epstein, was nominated for the Stella Prize in Australia and awarded the Tempo Best Literary Fiction Prize in Indonesia, the English PEN Translates Award and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant from PEN America. She is the author of the short-story collection Apple and Knife and editor of Deviant Disciples: Indonesian Women Poets, part of the Translating Feminisms series by Tilted Axis Press. Her essay 'On the Complicated Questions Around Writing About Travel' was selected for The Best American Travel Writing 2021. She holds a PhD from New York University and teaches Media and Film Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. intanparamaditha.com

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