In this dazzling debut story collection from celebrated Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha, fairytale, taboo, lust and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix.

A black velvet butterfly darts out of a cave. Menstrual blood pools in the backseat of a car. Rats pour forth from an open doorway.

These stories set in the Indonesian everyday – in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns – reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Melding horror and myth, this is subversive feminist fiction at its finest, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave.

Translated by Stephen J Epstein