The stories in this selection have been written over a period of thirty-five years, with the earliest, "The Dance," winning a prize in the first Asiaweek Short Story competition in 1981. Apart from three new stories, the others have been culled from the writer's earlier anthologies: The Dance and Other Stories (1996), Didima's Necklace and Other Stories (2005), and The Maidens' Club (2015). While most of the stories reveal the writer's feminist concerns, others testify to her sensitivity towards male protagonists as well. Many of the stories focus on a middle-class milieu. However, other stories dissect the lives of aristocrats on the one hand and the lives of disadvantaged working women on the other. The lives of most people in her stories are hard, with women often being victims of social expectations and morés. However, in a few stories she portrays strong women, women who can rise above the circumstances in which they have been placed by birth or marriage.
