Weird Girls - Apple and Knife

The VINTAGE CLASSICS WEIRD GIRLS series ventures into the dark heart of the uncanny with disturbing, and disturbed, protagonists who dare to defy the norm. Bold, deviant, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in. 

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 the fairy tale.

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 woman's 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.

About the Author

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.

About the Translator

Stephen J. Epstein directs the Asian Languages and Cultures Programme at Victoria University of Wellington where he is Associate Professor. He has translated several works of Korean and Indonesian fiction, including The Korean Wave: A Sourcebook, co-edited with Yun Mi Hwang (Academy of Korean Studies Press, 2016) and Intan Paramaditha’s novel The Wandering: A Red Shoes Adventure (Harvill Secker, 2020).

Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.2 x 19.8 cm