Intan Paramaditha menulis buku Sihir Perempuan, kumpulan cerita pendek yang masuk lima besar Khatulistiwa Literary Award pada tahun 2005 Kumpulan Budak Setan (2010), sebuah tribut untuk penulis horor Abdullah Harahap yang ditulis bersama Eka Kurniawan dan Ugoran Prasad naskah drama Goyang Penasaran (Intan Paramaditha & Naomi Srikandi, ed, KPG 2013), diadaptasi dari cerpennya dan dipentaskan oleh Teater Garasi di Yogyakarta dan Teater Salihara, Jakarta.

Women carve a place for themselves in this world, finding ways to subvert norms or enacting brutalities on themselves and each other. 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. Solihin would give anything to make dangdut singer Salimah his wife – anything at all. Jamal falls in love with the rich and powerful Bambang, but it is the era of the smiling general and, if he’s not careful, he may find himself recruited to Bambang’s brutal cause. Mara finds herself brainstorming an ad campaign for Free Maxi Pads, with a little help from the menstruation-eating hag of her childhood. 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. These short fictions set in the Indonesian everyday-in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns, on dangdut stages-reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. 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.

Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha