num_pages: 199
description: 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 todays world. These short fictions set in the Indonesian everydayin corporate boardrooms in shanty towns on dangdut stagesreveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Sometimes wacky and always engrossing 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.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 if hes not careful he may find himself recruited to Bambangs 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 a place for themselves in this world finding ways to subvert norms or enacting brutalities on themselves and each other.
language: English
title: Apple and Knife
publisher: Brow Books